(Catholic World News) — The president of the Italian bishops’ Episcopal Commission for the Clergy and Consecrated Life and the Italian bishops’ newspaper have denied media reports that newly approved norms for the formation of Italian seminarians allow for the admission of gay men who are celibate to seminaries.
The “norms on the non-admission of homosexual persons to the priesthood are not changing,” according to an article in Avvenire. This clarifcation “became necessary after a partial and non-contextualized reading by some press organs of paragraph 44 of the document that deals precisely with the theme of homosexuality.”
The assertion that the paragraph allows for the admission of gay men to seminaries “is not a correct reading, because the paragraph from the beginning reiterates the norms of the magisterium,” said Bishop Stefano Manetti of Fiesole, the president of the Italian bishops’ Episcopal Commission for the Clergy and Consecrated Life.
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