CBS News has confirmed that the Vatican has secret guidelines for priests who father children, despite their vows of celibacy. Vincent Doyle, the founder of a support group for children of priests, told CBS News that a Vatican official showed him the confidential instructions.
Doyle said he pushed the Church to publicly support these children, who often grow up in shame and secrecy. CBS News correspondent Roxana Saberi spoke with him and other children of priests fighting for recognition from the Catholic Church.
Sarah Thomas is one of those children. She told CBS News she is proof that priests sometimes break their vows to the Church, which for nearly nine centuries prohibited its clergymen from having sex and marrying.
“My mother had been ordered to secrecy by the Church,” she told Saberi.
Thomas was 14 when she met her father, a priest in England.
“It soon became apparent that he couldn’t or wouldn’t or wasn’t allowed to be some kind of father to me in a meaningful way,” Thomas said, adding that the hardest part of growing up was “to feel very isolated. I literally thought I was the only child priest in the world.”
But she now believes there could be thousands of children like her, and they are slowly being recognised, starting in Ireland.
In 2017 the Catholic Church in Ireland published revolutionary guidelines for priests, stating that if “a priest begets a child, the welfare of his child must be his first consideration” and that he must “face his responsibilities – personal, legal, moral and financial”.
Doyle told Saberi he pushed for the guidelines after learning that his late godfather, an Irish priest, was his real father.
It was the first time the Catholic Church publicly admitted that there were even children of priests. But these are guidelines – not requirements.
Doyle accepts this, but said “the first problem with children of priests is that they are not recognized”.
“When you are hidden… you are characterized by secrecy,” he added. This, he said, “gnaws away at their sense of worth”.
Almost two years after the Catholic Church in Ireland approved guidelines for priests with children, church officials around the world are taking notice.
The Catholic Church in America is considering a similar model, and the Vatican confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday that guidelines already exist for all Catholic clergy.
Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti confirmed to CBS News the existence “of a document for internal use, which summarizes the practice formed over the years in the Congregation and is not intended for publication.”
Gisotti said that “the fundamental principle behind these lines is the protection of the child. For this reason, the document generally requires that the priest submit a request for dispensation from the duties of the clerical state and, as a lay person, assume their responsibilities as a parent by devoting themselves exclusively” to their child.
Doyle urged Pope Francis to announce the guidelines himself, publicly, and on Tuesday he said that if the Vatican guidelines “are an acknowledgment of a global problem, I am now calling the Congregation for the Clergy (office of the Vatican) to publish them without delay.”
When asked what he wanted from the Pope, in particular, Doyle told CBS News that it would only take ‘two words, three words, four words, for these children to be recognized; ‘we recognize your pain , we condemn this pain and we want to repair this pain.’”
To help them with their pain, Doyle created the site “Coping International“, offering resources and advice. There is now a growing global community of people.
Thomas is part of this community and is preparing a doctorate there.
“What’s coming out more and more is that these kids are ready for a change,” she told Saberi. “Change is very difficult for the Catholic Church, but change is happening.”
