Vatican to use psychologists to weed out homosexual priests

Trainee priests suspected of being gay should be weeded out by psychologists and banned from joining the Catholic Church, the Vatican has said.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 4:02PM GMT 31 Oct 2008

Homosexuality was a "deviation" that must be rooted out in would-be clergy early on in order to prevent "tragedies", the Vatican decreed in new guidelines on the issue.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Catholic Education Congregation, said that a celibate candidate with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be barred "not because he commits a sin, but because homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" that would prevent him from fulfilling his duties.

The guidelines, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests which have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years, triggering law suits costing hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

The decree appears to ignore the consensus among sex abuse experts that homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.

Should there be any doubt about a trainee, psychologists or psychotherapists should be brought in to assess their sexual orientation and evaluate their suitability for the priesthood, the Vatican said.

The ruling outraged Italian gay rights organisations. "If the principal requirement for being a priest is chastity, sexual orientation should be irrelevant," said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet.

Another homosexual group said the Catholic Church was full of gay priests and threatened to 'out' them to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Vatican's stance.

"We offer ourselves as consultants to help the Italian Catholic hierarchy trace all the homosexuals hiding away in the Vatican, in the college of cardinals, in dioceses, in parishes, in monasteries and so on," said Aurelio Mancuso, the president of Arcigay. "It would certainly be a haul to make the sacred buildings tremble".