Pope Francis Discusses Revising Priestly Celibacy in New Interview

The pope added that earlier that day he had met with an Eastern Catholic priest who works in the Roman Curia who has a wife and a son.

Pope Francis has spoken about the value of priestly celibacy before. In January 2019 he said: “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church. I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no."

The pope added at the time that he thinks there is room to consider some exceptions for married clergy in the Latin rite "when there is a pastoral necessity" in remote locations due to a lack of priests, such as in the Pacific islands.

The nearly one-hour-long interview published Friday with Infobae, a Miami-based Spanish-language online news outlet, also touched on Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua, drug trafficking in Latin America, the war in Ukraine, and marriage annulments. 

When speaking of annulments, Pope Francis advised to look to what his predecessor Benedict XVI had said on the subject and said that “a large part of church marriages are invalid for lack of faith.”

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“And think about it: Sometimes [one] goes to a wedding and it seems more like it's a social reception and not a sacrament,” Pope Francis said.

“When young people say ‘forever,’ who knows what they mean [by] ‘forever.’”

He added: “A very wise lady once told me: ‘You priests are very lively. To be ordained priests you have to spend six, seven years in the seminary. On the other hand, to get married, which is for a lifetime — because a priest can leave, on the other hand, for us it is for a lifetime— they give us four meetings.’”

Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.