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IPFS News Link • Religion: Believers

Pope seeks 'courageous' debate over Amazon priest shortage

• https://apnews.com

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis urged South American bishops on Monday to speak "courageously" at a high-profile meeting on the Amazon, where the shortage of priests is so acute that the Vatican is considering ordaining married men and giving women official church ministries.

Francis opened the work of the three-week synod, or meeting of bishops, after indigenous leaders, missionary groups and a handful of bishops chanted and performed native dances in front of the main altar of St. Peter's Basilica with a small wood canoe containing religious objects.

Led in procession by the pope, the bishops then headed to the synod hall to chart new ways for the Catholic Church to better minister to remote indigenous communities and care for the rainforest they call home.

Among the most contentious proposals on the agenda is whether married elders could be ordained priests, a potentially revolutionary change in church tradition given Roman rite Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy.

The proposal is on the table because indigenous Catholics in remote parts of the Amazon can go months without seeing a priest or receiving the sacraments, threatening the very future of the church and its centuries-old mission to spread the faith in the region.

Another proposal calls for bishops to identify new "official ministries" for women, though priestly ordination for them is off the table.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the retired archbishop of Sao Paulo and the lead organizer of the synod, said the priest shortage had led to an "almost total absence of the Eucharist and other sacraments essential for daily Christian life."

"It will be necessary to define new paths for the future," he said, calling the proposal for married priests and ministries for women one of the six "core issues" that the synod bishops must address.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who himself is under pressure to relax celibacy for priests in his native Germany, said the married priest question is complicated, since any moves taken to address the priest shortage in the Amazon will invariably echo throughout the universal church.

"The participants of the synod know, and also the pope knows, that this is also a discussion in other parts of the world, so they have to be very prudent," he said. "But they will speak about it, that's clear."


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