Pope Benedict XVI is said to have approved a document saying that homosexual men should not be ordained as Roman Catholic priests, a conservative Catholic web site in the US has reported.
The long-anticipated document, prepared at the request of the late Pope John Paul II, reportedly calls on bishops to bar even chaste homosexuals from seminaries because their orientation is rooted in a personality disorder that may undermine their capacity to minister, according to Catholic World News.
The report, posted on Monday on www.cwnews.com, an independent news service with links to the pope's American publisher, could not be independently corroborated, but several Vatican sources confirmed that such a document has been on his desk awaiting his decision.
Since the recent clerical sex abuse scandals, the issue of gay priests has gone from taboo to one of the most hotly debated aspects of the crisis.
Noting that the overwhelming majority of victims were teenage boys, powerful members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy have framed the problem as homosexual priests unable to live chastely.
Liberals tend to see the roots of the scandal in a culture of clerical secrecy and the church's mandatory celibacy requirement.
While the document does not represent any change in church teaching, it is expected to have a significant impact on American seminaries because it flies in the face of the de facto policy of "don't ask, don't tell" in most of them.
For that reason, many conservatives hail it as a get-tough policy that is a badly needed corrective.
Others, however, say they fear it will drive some gay seminarians deeper into the closet even as it diminishes a declining pool of seminarians.
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service