“The Church is going to lose a lot of good servants”, regrets a former priest who is now married

“It’s an earthquake, the Church will lose a certain number of servants”, regretted Friday, December 3 on franceinfo the former priest Bernard Chalmel, after the acceptance by the Pope of the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit, following the revelations of the weekly Point on a possible relationship “ambiguous” interviewed with a woman in 2012.

Bernard Chalmel himself left his church in 2005, after confessing that he had a relationship with a parishioner. They have been married for fifteen years. “I lived like an outcast, hidden, in a clandestine way”, he says. With his association, Plein jour, he supports today “the clandestine companions of priests, who suffer”, very numerous, according to him, since nearly half of the priests would have had at least one connection with other adults, thus relaying the studies of the theologian Anne Soupa.

There are “a real leaden on sexual morality in the Church, an omerta”, “the institution takes precedence first, before people”, denounces Bernard Chalmel. The former clergyman recounts that when he left the priesthood, his hierarchy asked him not to disclose the reasons for his departure.

Bernard Chalmel recalls that celibacy has not always existed in theEcatholic church. So he “was imposed in the 12th century, for financial, political, moral reasons. And today, celibacy is no longer credible, defensible in the secularized world in which we live.”