Majority in poll in Italy support priests marrying

UPI.com
May 17, 2010

A majority of Italians surveyed in a poll released Monday said Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to marry. The poll by Demos came as bishops in Austria asked the Vatican to hold discussions on the issue of priestly celibacy, The Times of London reported. In the poll, 65.9 percent of Italians interviewed said they were "very much" in favor or "fairly" in favor of abolishing the church's celibacy rule and 22 percent said they were opposed to priests marrying...

And, in a related development, Vienna Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn said Monday he shared the concern of Eisenstadt Bishop Paul Iby’s concern about mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests. "The concern that Bishop Iby expressed is shared by all of us (Austrian bishops), and I am happy to be in a Church in which there is freedom of speech and opinion," he said. Austrian bishops had been expected to discuss celibacy at last week’s parish council conference in Mariazell, Styria, that they all attended but there has been no public confirmation that they did...