Saturday, June 29, 2013

Priests in Love (4 of 11): International Gossip.



From Jane Anderson’s “Priest in Love: Roman Catholic Clergy and Their Intimate Friendships” (a book of interviews with Australian priests) (p. 101; respaced from original):

One priest who frequents Rome reported to me a conversation that he had with the superior general of a major religious order. 

“He told me that the Vatican had just sought his recommendation.  It wanted a priest from his order to serve as bishop of an unnamed diocese in Latin America.  Reason: of the sixty-three diocesan priests in that area who had the education background to be a bishop, none of them was celibate.  They all had wives and families.”

My correspondent then went on to say that the ubiquity of this phenomenon could be checked out in the “Annuario Pontificio”, the Vatican Yearbook, where one can see just how many bishops in Latin America are religious.

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