“Celibacy is a martyr for some priests” met by the theologian Anne Soupa, guest of France Inter on Saturday 27 November, after the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Michel Aupetit, handed over to Pope Francis his resignation this week, after being accused in the press of having maintained a relationship intimate with a woman.
Anna Soupa calls the Church to “put on the right glasses and realize that she is depriving herself of a lot of talent by asking for celibacy”. “A love affair is life”, she wants to put it into perspective, further asserting that “polls show Catholics are in favor of optional celibacy [selon leur choix] priests “.
The theologian also emphasizes “A disproportion that hurts me a lot. For a disciplinary problem of liaison with a woman, an archbishop resigns in three days. And for crimes committed against children, no bishop has resigned in France.” Anne Soupa, the co-founder of the victims association La parole libérée François Devaux and the editorial director of Christian witness Christine Pedotti called in October for the “collective resignation” of the French bishops, after the conclusions of the Sauvé Commission on pedocriminality in the Catholic Church.
For Anne Soupa, “the aggiornamento of the Church, which needs new blood” is essential. Pope Francis, presented as progressive, “has difficulties” to put on the table the question of the celibacy of priests, in particular because of a “very rigid current of cardinals and bishops who are very attached to questions of morals and block developments on this subject”.
Bishop Aupetit categorically denies the information of the weekly Le Point, which affirms that the archbishop had in 2012 an intimate and consented relationship with a woman. He justifies his resignation request to the newspaper The cross, by wanting “avoid division”.
The diocese of Paris assured AFP that it was not “not from a romantic relationship”, nor “sexual”, but of a “ambiguous behavior with a person very present vis-à-vis him”, adding that he “had opened up to his hierarchy at the time”. Pope Francis can decide to accept or reject the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris.