Celibacy of priests, the words of Pope Francis

"I go so far as to say that where the priestly fraternity works and where there are bonds of true friendship, there it is also possible to live the celibate choice. Celibacy is a gift that the Latin Church guards, but it is a gift that, in order to be lived as sanctification, requires healthy relationships, relationships of true esteem and true good that find their root in Christ. Without friends and without prayer, celibacy can become an unbearable burden and a counter-witness to the very beauty of the priesthood ”.

Thus Papa Francesco at the opening of the work of the Symposium promoted by the Congregation for Bishops.

Bergoglio also said: “The bishop he is not a school overseer, he is not a 'watchman', he is a father, and he must try to behave like this because on the contrary he pushes priests away or approaches the most ambitious ”.

In the priestly life of Pope Francis "there were dark moments": Bergoglio himself said, underlining, in the opening speech of a Vatican symposium on the priesthood, the support he has always found in the practice of prayer. "Many priestly crises have at their origin a scarce life of prayer, a lack of intimacy with the Lord, a reduction of the spiritual life to a mere religious practice", said the Argentine pontiff: "I remember important moments in my life in which this closeness to the Lord was decisive in supporting me: there were dark moments ". Bergoglio's biographies report in particular the years following his mandate as "provincial" of the Argentine Jesuits, first in Germany and then in Cordoba, Argentina, as situations of particular interior difficulty