The question of celibacy, which was suppressed under Pope John Paul II, has come to dominate a three-week synod of more than 250 cardinals and bishops.Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice, who is seen as a potential future Pope and is chairing the discussion, raised the issue in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Scola said that some bishops had “put forward the request to ordain married faithful of proven faith and virtue, the so-called viri probati,” while maintaining his own support for celibacy. There is a shortage of priests, and reformers believe that allowing married priests would help to attract newcomers.

There is one priest for every 2,677 Catholics, compared with one for every 1,797 thirty years ago. In the United States, where the Church has been hit hard by the crisis involving sexual abuse by clergy, the number of priests has fallen from 58,909 to 42,528. Meanwhile, the number of American Catholics has risen from 48 million to 65 million.

After the synod, the first under the new papacy, a papal document will be released banning even celibate homosexuals from seminaries, a move that could worsen the shortage of priests. The issue has been taken up by several members of the gathering.

Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle, of the Philippines, said: “In the absence of a priest, there is no Eucharist. We have to face the shortage of priests squarely.”

Bishop Roberto Camilleri Azzopardi, of Honduras, said that his diocese had only one priest for every 16,000 Catholics, while Bishop Lorenzo Voltolini Esti, of Ecuador, said that the number of people going to confession was dropping because priests were not available. Bishops from the Eastern, or Byzantine, branch of Catholicism, which allows married priests, were more forthright. “

Celibacy has no theological foundation,” Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, of the Melkite Catholics, said. If married priests were allowed in the Eastern rite, there was no reason for them to be banned in the Latin, or Western, rite, he said.

Prelates ranging from Bishop Lucio Muandula, of Xai-Xai, Mozambique, to Bishop Arnold Orowae, of Wabag, Papua New Guinea, agreed that celibacy must be addressed. Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, the Maronite patriarch of Antioch, in Lebanon, said that marriage had drawbacks for priests, but he noted that the Catholic Church already accepted married Anglican priests who had converted.

Catholic parishes with a shortage of priests have increasingly relied on deacons and lay preachers to take services, although they cannot consecrate bread and wine.

Father Paul Embery, of the National Office for Vocation of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales — which launched a campaign on beer mats and Underground posters to attract trainee priests over the summer — said that there had been a huge rise in the number of married deacons in Britain and elsewhere. He said: “Deacons cannot administer the (communion) sacraments, hear confessions or anoint the sick. But they can conduct marriages and baptisms. Some might say they were married priests in waiting.”

Some Vatican sources have pointed out that Pope Benedict has proved to be far more open-minded than his detractors had suggested that he would be.

NUMBERS FALL

• Priesthood entrants in England and Wales fell by half in 10 years to about 200 in seminaries today
  
  
• Average age rose from 25 in 1984 to 31 now
  
  
• Westminster diocese had 843 priests in 1990; there are now only 623
  
  
• Europe has one priest to every 1,386 Catholics
  
  
• Catholics worldwide increased from 757 million in 1978 to 1,085 billion in 2003
  
  
• Priests in Europe fell to 140,000 from 174,000

Should priests marry?
www.timesonline.co.uk/debate

Times Recommends

• 8,000 miles from Washington - Obama's grandmother
• Review: Oliver Stone's W in Beverly Hills
• Zimbabwe chaos wipes out education