Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has decided on Wednesday not to allow married men to be ordained as clergymen in remote areas, ignoring the calls of bishops in the Amazon region to ease restrictions in order to combat a severe shortage of priests
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th February, 2020) Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has decided on Wednesday not to allow married men to be ordained as clergymen in remote areas, ignoring the calls of bishops in the Amazon region to ease restrictions in order to combat a severe shortage of priests.
In an apostolic exhortation entitled Beloved Amazon, the Pope made no explicit reference to the bishops' requests. Instead, the head of the Catholic Church urged bishops to encourage missionaries to travel to the Amazon region.
"This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region," Pope Francis wrote.
The Pope also stated that the Amazon poses a unique set of challenges for the Roman Catholic Church, which has declined in popularity in Latin America according to a landmark report by the US think tank Pew Research Center.
"Similarly, in this historical moment, the Amazon region challenges us to transcend limited perspectives and 'pragmatic' solutions mired in partial approaches, in order to seek paths of inculturation that are broader and bolder," the Pope wrote.
During an October conference in Rome, Amazon bishops voted 128 to 41 in favor of allowing married individuals to become priests. Church officials have complained that they are unable to deliver weekly Mass to the majority of villages in the region due to the shortage of clergymen. Priests in the Amazon are also facing increasingly challenging environmental conditions, as the region suffered some of the worst wildfires in recorded history this past year.
