Pope Benedict XVI has signed an edict banning anyone with homosexual tendencies from the Roman Catholic priesthood, sources said on Wednesday.
The new measure, which also targets enthusiasm for gay culture, follows a wrenching debate in the Anglican Communion about the consecration of an openly homosexual bishop in the US.
The new Vatican rules refer only to candidate priests and seminarians, rather than priests in office, the sources said.
The apparent text of the anti-gay "instruction" prepared by the Vatican congregation for education was published by an independent Catholic agency, Adista, and reproduced in most Italian newspapers on Wednesday.
However, it was not scheduled to be published in the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano until next Tuesday, the sources said.
The document published by Adista said the pope approved it and ordered its publication on Aug. 31. It does not mention the scandal of pedophile priests, which has led some dioceses to pay out millions of dollars in damages to victims.
If the question of homosexual priests has always been a problem for the Church, the document said it has become "more urgent in the present situation."
The decree, 10 years in the making, has been bitterly criticized by liberal Catholic groups, particularly in the US, who are calling for the recognition of gay priests.
German politicians and gay rights groups reacted angrily to the development.
Germany's Lesbian and Gay Federation said the edict targeted homosexuals without regard for the qualities they could offer as priests.
The text says candidates for the priesthood must possess emotional "maturity" in order to ensure a "correct relationship" with both men and women.
The document also attacks "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" as being an objective sign of moral disorder. However, it adds that people displaying such tendencies should be accepted "with respect and delicacy" and that any kind of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
It rules out the priesthood to "those who practice homosexuality, who have deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or who support the so-called gay culture."
However, it says that young men who have experienced transitory homosexual tendencies as part of their adolescence could be admitted to the diaconate, a possible step toward priesthood, after a probationary period of at least three years.
It also states that bishops, heads of religious orders and confessors are responsible for being "morally certain" that a candidate for the priesthood is not gay and does not have homosexual tendencies.
Meanwhile, gay-rights activists and liberal Catholics in the US girded on Wednesday for a long battle over the Vatican's tougher stance, predicting the Church would lose thousands of followers in the US.
Catholics would lose thousands of future priests in the US, while those who remain will live in fear of "witchhunts," said Marianne Duddy-Burke of the gay and lesbian Catholic group Dignity USA.
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