VATICAN CITY — Last year, Pope Francis called for “bold proposals” to meet the spiritual needs of Catholics in the Amazon, a vast region with a scarcity of clerics.
But in a papal document released Wednesday, Francis ignored the boldest one: allowing married priests.
Instead, Francis’ highly anticipated document on the Amazon region, Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon) focuses mostly on cultural and environmental issues. Francis spices the 32-page document with plenty of poetry, but offers few, if any, pragmatic changes for the church.
The lack of an opening for married priests, or women deacons, is expected to disappoint the Pope’s liberal supporters, particularly in the Americas and Europe.
“People are starting to adjust their expectations,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “The major reforms they were expecting of him may never come.”
American bishops who met with Pope Francis this week got the impression that he personally opposes the idea of married priests, saying that people who had pushed for the reform would likely be disappointed, Catholic News Service reported.
(The Catholic Church already allows some married priests who have converted from other Christian traditions.)
Instead of structural reforms, the 32-page document released Wednesday, known as an Apostolic Exhortation, is filled with flowery language, including the Pope’s prose poem of his “dreams” for the Amazon.
“I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the poor…” the Pope begins. He then devotes the first three chapters of the four-chapter document to his social, cultural and ecological ideas, which call for respect for the people, land and culture of the Amazon.
The final chapter, on the Catholic Church’s role in the Amazon, outlines the spiritual needs of the 32 million people in the region. But Francis stops well short of endorsing some of the changes requested by the Amazon’s bishops in order to meet those needs.
At the Vatican’s synod — a meeting of bishops — last October, one of the most controversial items on the agenda was the question of ordaining some married men in the Amazon as priests to overcome a shortage of clergy in the region. In the end, the synod proposed “to ordain as priests suitable and respected men of the community.”
After the synod approved the measure, which would allow married priests, many Catholics expected the Pope to follow suit. Instead, he ignored the issue.
The proposal received the highest number of “no” votes at the synod: 41, although 128 participants were in favor.
The synod’s proposal to change the Catholic Church’s long tradition stirred unease throughout the Catholic world last year, particularly in conservative circles, causing several cardinals, including Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, to write articles and books in favor of celibacy.
On this Francis seems to have sided with conservatives, though it’s hard to tell. He does not mention the proposal in his document. Instead, the Pope reiterates that only a priest can preside at the Eucharist and that saying Mass is a “non-delegable function.”
The Pope also said it is a “narrow aim” to be concerned only with “a greater presence of ordained ministers who can celebrate the Eucharist.”
Instead, Francis called on nuns and lay Catholics to assume “important responsibilities” in their church communities and urged bishops in Latin America to pray for priestly vocations in the Amazon.
(PHOTO: Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images)
