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Vatican Lifts Ban on Married Priests for Eastern Catholics

Some dramatic and significant news for Eastern Catholics, from CNS.

Some significant news for Eastern Catholics, from CNS:

The Vatican has lifted its ban on the ordination of married men to the priesthood in Eastern Catholic churches outside their traditional territories, including in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, signed the decree on 14 June. It was published later online in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official periodical through which Vatican laws and decisions are published.

The new law says the pope concedes to Eastern Catholic bishops outside their traditional territory the faculties to “allow pastoral service of Eastern married clergy” and “to ordain Eastern married candidates” in their eparchies or dioceses, although they must inform the local Latin-rite bishop in writing “in order to have his opinion and any relevant information.”

“We are overjoyed with the lifting of the ban,” Melkite Bishop Nicholas Samra of Newton, Mass., told Catholic News Service in a 15 November email.

The Vatican decree explained that in response to the “protests” of the Latin-rite bishops in the United States, in 1890 the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples prohibited married Ruthenian priests from living in the United States. And in 1929-30, the Congregation for Eastern Churches extended the ban to all Eastern-rite priests throughout North America, South America and Australia.

The 1929 prohibition, known as Cum data fuerit, had significant repercussions for the Eastern Catholic churches in the United States. Sandri’s decree noted that soon after the law was promulgated, “an estimated 200,000 Ruthenian faithful became Orthodox.”

Ruthenian Bishop John Kudrick of Parma, Ohio, said 16 November that he sees the end to imposed celibacy for Eastern priests in the diaspora as an acknowledgement of the Eastern churches’ “obligation to maintain their integrity” and “of the right of the various churches to equal responsibility of evangelization throughout the world.”

“The world needs the church in its fullness,” he said, adding he believes the “change of policy results from the longstanding experience of married priests in the Western world, especially the Orthodox, but also Eastern Catholic.”

Read more.

To learn more about the church in North America most impacted by the ban, read our profiles of The American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church and Carpatho-Rusyan Greek Catholic Churches.

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