A priest in northern Italy has admitted before his flock that he has had a child with a parishioner who is separated from her husband, press reports said Saturday.
"I don't want to do like Adam and Eve did when they hid from the call of God after the original sin," the 41-year-old parish priest of the town of Monterosso near Padua, Don Sante Sguotti, told some 200 worshippers on Friday evening.
`joy'
"The fruit of one's fertility should be a cause for joy," said Sguotti, who has been asked by Padua Archbishop Antonio Mattiazzo to leave the parish, home to some 800 souls.
"Maybe those who say priests are all false are right," he said. "I feel false, because it is not easy to walk alone along the path to truth. Sometimes you need to find someone to walk with."
support
Sguotti apparently has the support of many of his parishioners. Some young people wore T-shirts inscribed with "Don Sante Is My Priest" as he made the admission during a mass in which he stopped short of presiding over communion.
Voicing surprise over the support on Saturday, Sguotti said he was trying to "remain detached, both from those who applaud me and from those who attack me" for fathering a child with the parishioner, also in her early 40s.
"The affection makes me happy, it's normal, but it's not something absolute and could be a spur-of-the-moment response. But I have always let people form their own opinions," the priest told the ANSA news agency.
announcement
Sguotti said he would announce his response to the archbishop's request for him to leave Monterosso at a news conference there on Wednesday.
The Roman Catholic Church requires priests to be celibate, with few exceptions.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS