The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, is standing by remarks he made recently that being gay should not mean a man could not become a priest.
In an interview published in the current issue of the English Catholic weekly, The Tablet, Dr Martin is quoted as saying "you don't write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man".
The Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education is currently finalising a document which is expected to ban even celibate gay men from training for the priesthood. It is to be published at the end of this month.
Dr Martin is in Rome attending a Synod of Bishops which began last Sunday and will continue for another two weeks.
A spokeswoman for the Dublin archdiocese told The Irish Times that Dr Martin confirmed yesterday he was standing over his comments, as reported in The Tablet.
Interviewed for the magazine in Brussels on September 30th, while attending a meeting of European and American bishops, Dr Martin said it was important that priests come to terms with their own sexual maturity and orientation in order to ensure their celibate chastity.
He commented that in the past not enough attention was given to helping priests towards maturity in their sexuality.
"We need to provide services of support for these priests and this will involve helping them along their personal journey. Priests, at times, live a very lonely existence, and they have to find their own spirituality and contact with God and deepen that day by day," he said.
He also emphasised that "you cannot identify homosexuality with paedophilia". Paedophilia was a specific issue that needed to be dealt with carefully and not subjected to witch-hunts within the church. "It's [ paedophilia] not a result of homosexuality, nor is it a result of celibacy. We must address paedophilia for what it is . . . it's a very specific thing and it must be addressed on a case-by-case basis," he said.
Speaking about clerical child sex abuse he said "you have to say that horrendous damage was done to people and there can be no other response until that is established. If you read statistics about sex abuse that's one thing, but when you hear the stories that's another. There's no way you can spin that. The only thing to do is say that they were horrific. Then you need to take steps to ensure this will never happen again," he said.
He said the fact that this was the first year in the history of the Dublin archdiocese when no priest was ordained was of "major concern" to him. He stressed that a shortage of priests shouldn't lessen the quality of formation in seminaries.