Italian prelate, bishops’ newspaper deny media reports on admission of gay men to seminaries
January 11, 2025
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.
In 2016, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy issued revised norms for the formation of seminarians and asked episcopal conferences to revise their own national norms in light of the Vatican norms. In November 2023, the Italian bishops approved their revised national norms and submitted them to the Vatican for final approval. The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy approved the revised national norms in December 2024 for a three-year period, and the Italian bishops’ conference published them on January 9.
The 2016 Vatican norms addressed the topic of men with homosexual tendencies in paragraphs 199-201. Citing a 2005 Vatican document, paragraph 199 of the 2016 Vatican norms begins:
In relation to persons with homosexual tendencies who seek admission to Seminary, or discover such a situation in the course of formation, consistent with her own Magisterium, “the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’. Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women.”
The new Italian national norms address the topic in paragraph 44, translated here in full. The first quotation in paragraph 44 is from the 2016 Vatican norms; the second, from Pope Francis’s apostolic letter on St. Joseph; the third, from the final document of the 2018 synod on young people and vocational discernment.
44. “In relation to persons with homosexual tendencies who seek admission to Seminary, or discover such a situation in the course of formation, consistent with her own Magisterium, the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’. Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women.” In the formation process, when reference is made to homosexual tendencies, it is also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect, but, as for every candidate, to grasp its meaning in the global framework of the young person’s personality, so that, by knowing himself and integrating the objectives proper to the human and priestly vocation, he arrives at a general harmony. The objective of the formation of the candidate for the priesthood in the affective-sexual sphere is the ability to accept as a gift, to freely choose and to live responsibly chastity in celibacy. In fact, it “is not simply a sign of affection, but the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love. A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts and makes for misery. God himself loved humanity with a chaste love; he left us free even to go astray and set ourselves against him”. Furthermore, “celibacy for the Kingdom should be understood as a gift to be recognized and verified in freedom, joy, gratuitousness and humility, before admission to candidacy or first profession”. This does not only mean controlling one’s sexual impulses, but growing in a quality of evangelical relationships that overcomes the forms of possessiveness, that does not allow oneself to be seized by competition and comparison with others and knows how to guard with respect the boundaries of one’s own and others’ intimacy. Being aware of this is fundamental and indispensable to realizing the priestly commitment or vocation, but those who live the passion for the Kingdom in celibacy should also become capable of addressing, in renunciation for it, frustrations, including the lack of emotional and sexual gratification.
Paragraph 44’s statement that “when reference is made to homosexual tendencies, it is also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect,” means the following, according to Bishop Manetti:
It means putting the person at the center, beyond immediate categorizations, in order to be able to accompany him in addressing the truth of his sexual orientation.
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