Pope Benedict met top advisers today to discuss the status of celibacy among Roman Catholic clergy and requests by married priests who want to return to the active ministry.
The meeting of more than 20 heads of Vatican departments was called to debate a Vatican strategy to deal with a renegade African archbishop who has founded a movement of men who left the active ministry to wed and want to return as married men.
The unprecedented gathering comes some two months after Archbishop Emanuel Milingo, a former Vatican official, raised the spectre of a modern schism when he ordained four married men as priests in Washington, D.C. He was excommunicated.
According to Church law, a man who is allowed to leave the priesthood, under a procedure known as a laicisation, must receive a separate dispensation from the vow of celibacy from the Pope.
However, many men have married without this dispensation and want to regularise their position in the Church.
Vatican officials have said no major decisions are expected to come immediately from the meeting, which one called "a study of the situation" that arose after Archbishop Milingo's "disobedience".