BY STAFF REPORTER
A SENIOR Vatican official has said the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood is "imprudent" and "very risky".
Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez made the comments last week as the Vatican was drafting new guidelines for accepting candidates for the priesthood. The guidelines are expected to address whether homosexuals should be barred from seminaries.
Ordination "of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent, and from the pastoral point of view, very risky," the cardinal wrote in a letter to an unidentified cleric that was reprinted in the Vatican publication Not itiae.
"A homosexual person or someone with homosexual tendencies is not, therefore, suitable to receive the sacrament of holy orders," he wrote.
Cardinal Medina was head of an influential Vatican administrative department, the Congregation for Divine Worship, when the letter was written. He retired in October.
The document on admission to the priesthood is being prepared by another Vatican department, the Congregation for Catholic Education, and isn't expected to be released until next year.