(Tyler Arnold/CNA) — Sri Lankan Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has mandated that girls are not permitted to serve as altar servers in parishes within the Archdiocese of Colombo.
“No girls should be invited to serve at the altar, as altar servers, in the archdiocese,” Ranjith wrote in an Oct. 22 letter to parish priests that was made public this week.
According to the letter, the cardinal issued the order because serving as an altar server can be a pathway to the priesthood and should therefore be a position reserved for boys.
“It should always be young boys because this is one of the main sources of vocations to the priesthood in Sri Lanka and it will affect the number of candidates entering the seminaries, which [is a] risk we cannot take” the letter continues. “Since females are not allowed to be ordained priests, we have made that decision.”
Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith. Image credit: Janaka Pradeep at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Image cropped and enhanced from original
