Cardinal Kasper said about celibacy that ‘Francis definitely wanted to change something, but Pope Emeritus Benedict successfully intervened at the time together with Cardinal Robert Sarah.’
(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Walter Kasper said that Pope Francis wanted to "change" priestly celibacy, but Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah “successfully intervened” to stop it.
In an interview with the German Cicero magazine, Kasper addressed the possible “relaxation of celibacy and access to the priesthood,” stating that “My assessment is that Francis definitely wanted to change something, but Pope Emeritus Benedict successfully intervened at the time together with Cardinal Robert Sarah.”
Kasper was likely referring to the book defending priestly celibacy authored by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Sarah and published in January 2020. The book is titled From the Depths of Our Hearts (De profoundeur de nos cœurs), and was published shortly after the heterodox Amazon Synod, where the idea of ordaining married men was pushed. This would break with centuries of tradition of mandatory celibacy for priests in the Latin Church, a practice that is based on the life of Jesus Christ Himself.
“The ability to renounce marriage in order to place oneself totally at the Lord’s disposal is a criterion for the priestly ministry,” Benedict XVI wrote in the book. “As for the concrete form of celibacy in the ancient Church, it should also be pointed out that married men could only receive the sacrament of Holy Orders if they had committed themselves to sexual abstinence, that is to say, to a Josephite marriage. Such a situation seems to have been quite normal during the first centuries.”
Kasper was part of the infamous St. Gallen Mafia, a group of high-ranking, heterodox clerics who opposed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy in 2005 and reportedly plotted to elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope. The group had multiple meetings in St. Gallen, Switzerland, between 1995 and 2006.
Kasper, a 92-year-old German cardinal, who even before Amoris Laetitia pushed for divorced and civilly "remarried" persons to receive Holy Communion, is an ardent supporter of the Pope Francis agenda, which orthodox Catholics point out includes the acceptance of mortal sin under the pretext of being “pastoral.”
