REVEALED: Vatican Secret Rules for Priests Who Father Kids…
“It’s the next scandal,” said Vincent Doyle, the son of a priest. “There are kids everywhere.”
ROME - Vincent Doyle, a psychotherapist in Ireland, was 28 when he learned from his mother that the Roman Catholic priest he had always known as his godfather was in truth his biological father. The discovery led him to create a global support group to help other children of priests, like him, suffering from the internalized shame that comes with being born from church scandal. But one archbishop finally showed him what he was looking for: a document of Vatican guidelines for how to deal with priests who father children, proof that he was hardly alone.
The longstanding tradition of celibacy among Roman Catholic clergy was broadly codified in the 12th century, but not necessarily adhered to, even in the highest places. Rodrigo Borgia, while a priest, had four children with his mistress before he became Pope Alexander VI, an excess that helped spur Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation. Luther wrote mockingly that the pope had as much command over celibacy as “the natural movement of the bowels.” But Mr. Doyle said that the website for his support group, Coping International, has 50,000 users in 175 countries. He said he was first shown the Vatican guidelines in October 2017 by Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, the Vatican's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva.
Mr. Gisotti, the Vatican spokesman, said that the internal 2017 document synthesized a decade's worth of procedures, and that its "fundamental principle" was the "protection of the child. Mr. Doyle, who once studied for the priesthood and has sought to cooperate with church leaders, played a role in developing them, said Martin Long, a spokesman for the Irish Bishops' Conference. Canon lawyers say that there is nothing in church law that forces priests to leave the priesthood for fathering children. In 2010, Mr. Zattoni sued Father Tosi, demanding to be recognized. The Vatican eventually instructed Father Tosi's bishop to admonish him and remind him of his responsibilities as a father, but did not demand his removal from the priesthood.
Father Tosi died in 2014, still a priest. "It's a breakthrough, and anybody can do it," said Linda Lawless, 56, an amateur genealogist in Australia, and herself the daughter of a priest, who has helped members of Coping International. Last year, she used a DNA test and the increasingly comprehensive databases and family trees of the genealogical website Ancestry.com to confirm that her biological father was a priest.
Skimcast: skimcast.com
