Europe 1 10:35 a.m., December 26, 2021

Crisis of vocations, pedocriminality, estrangement from priests and the faithful ... According to the news which crosses the Church, the question of celibacy of priests regularly comes to the fore.

But for Cardinal Robert Sarah, guest on Sunday of the Great Rendezvous, the Church should not review its position.

INTERVIEW

Should we go back to the celibacy of priests to make the priesthood more "attractive"?

The number of Catholic priests in France has dropped considerably in a few decades, dropping from 29,000 (diocesans and religious together) in 1995 to around 12,000, a trend that can be found in many Western countries.

But for Cardinal Robert Sarah, guest on Sunday of the Great Rendezvous, this is a false solution.

"Anglicans are getting married and have no more vocations," he says.

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Rémi fell in love while he was a priest: "I am first of all a man"

"Celibacy, for a priest, is an extraordinary wealth. That means, for a priest, to be configured to Christ. The priest would like to become Christ himself", develops Robert Sarah, taking up the arguments of Canon 277 of the Catholic Church :

"Clerics are bound by the obligation to keep perfect and perpetual continence because of the Kingdom of Heaven, and are therefore bound to celibacy, a special gift from God by which sacred ministers can unite more easily with Christ with a heart without sharing and to devote himself more freely to the service of God and of men. "

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"There is a theological drift which makes the priest sacred"

The Catholic Church is one of the last Christian organizations to refuse the marriage of priests.

"It is a freedom", insists the Guinean cardinal.

And to conclude: "We do not force anyone to be a priest. But if someone chooses to follow Christ, he must follow Christ celibate".