The Vatican published its long-awaited document on gays in the priesthood today, affirming that men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies should not be ordained.
The document says only men who had clearly overcome homosexual tendencies for at least three years should be admitted to the priesthood.
Polish priest P.Jarek Cielecki shows the controversial Vatican document today
The official release of the 18-paragraph
Instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education came a week after an Italian Catholic news agency posted a leaked copy on its website; as a result, the document's contents were already known.
Pope Benedict XVI approved the Instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education on August 31st and ordered it published - one of the first major documents he has approved for release since being elected Pope on April 19th.
The short document, which takes a strict line on the place of gays in the clergy, has already been praised by conservatives and condemned by liberals and sparked heated debate well beyond the Roman Catholic Church.
The document reinforces standing policy that many in the Church believe has not been properly enforced. Its urgency has been highlighted by the 2002 sexual abuse scandal in the United States, which involved mostly abuse of teenage boys by priests.
It does not affect those men who are already priests but only those entering seminaries to prepare for the priesthood.
It restates long-standing Church teaching that deep-seated homosexual tendencies are "objectively disordered" and that homosexual acts are grave sins.
The "instruction" by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education makes a difference between deep-seated homosexual tendencies and "the expression of a transitory problem".
It says homosexual tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the deaconate, a position just one step short of the priesthood that usually precedes ordination by about a year.
"If a candidate practises homosexuality, or presents deep-seated homosexual tendencies, his spiritual director as well as his confessor have the duty to dissuade him in conscience from proceeding towards ordination," it says. "Such persons in fact find themselves in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women."
It says heads of seminaries have a serious duty to see to it that candidates for the priesthood do not "present disturbances of a sexual nature which are incompatible with the priesthood".