The number of priests who leave service for the sake of marriage is growing in the Philippines

An increasing number of Catholic priests in the Philippines leave service in order to marry, they say in the bishop of the country.

“As a rule, if priests decide to get a family, they ask to deprive them of the cleric status and thus reconcile them with the church,” said Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the head of a special church tribunal, which is engaged in such matters. “This is normal, because the priests are also people,” the Blagovers -Info reports.

According to the Philippine Bishop's Conference, over the period since 1985, more than 200 people abandoned the priesthood, that is, about ten per year. In 2004, twenty priests and four deacons were deprived of the status of clergy.

According to the Archbishop of Cruz, although the number of such priests is growing, it "does not cause anxiety" in the Catholic hierarchy. Prolate also urged parents not to insist that their children certainly become clergy. According to the Archbishop of Cruz, many priests who refused to ministry took the rank solely in order to fulfill the will of their parents. “Parents, especially mothers, often exert moral pressure on their sons, seeking to become priests,” the prelate said. “When they enter the seminary, they are still too young to be aware of what they will have to abandon.”

The procedure according to which such "unconscious" priests can abandon their ministry has several stages. First, the cleric addresses his bishop. Having examined the application, the prelate refers the case to the church court (in the Philippines it is headed by the Archbishop of Cruz). After that, the case is transferred to the Vatican : only the Pope is endowed with the power to free the priest from his vows and the status of the cleric.