VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Addressing bishops and seminarians, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the importance of celibacy, a notable intervention in the wake of recent calls for married clergy in the Catholic Church.

This week sees many bishops, priests, and seminarians make pilgrimage to Rome and to meet with the Pope, as part of their respective Jubilee events for the 2025 Jubilee Year.

At a number of these meetings, Leo has taken the opportunity to highlight the importance of celibacy in the clerical state.

Addressing first a group of seminarians from the Diocese of Triveneto, Italy, Leo cited the patron of his order, St. Augustine, who wrote of a personified apparition of the virtue of continence who urged the saint to trust in God’s assistance. Commenting on this, Leo said:

As a father, I repeat these same words to you, which were so good for Augustine’s restless heart: they do not apply only with regard to celibacy, which is a charism to be acknowledged, conserved and educated, but can guide your entire journey of discernment and formation in ordained ministry.

Speaking to bishops in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope expanded on his theme of celibacy for the clergy.

Noting that bishops must center themselves on “faith, hope and charity,” the Pope stated that to these “a number of other essential virtues can be added: pastoral prudence, poverty, perfect continence in celibacy, and human virtues.”

Celibacy, he said, along with the practice of the virtue of chastity, is a way of the bishop “living a life of Christian discipleship and presenting to all the authentic image of the Church, holy and chaste in her members as in her Head.” Leo commented:

Together with material poverty, the life of the Bishop is also marked by that specific form of poverty which is celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 19:12). Here, it is not just a question of living as a celibate, but of practicing chastity of heart and conduct, and in this way living a life of Christian discipleship and presenting to all the authentic image of the Church, holy and chaste in her members as in her Head. He must be firm and decisive in dealing with situations that can cause scandal and with every case of abuse, especially involving minors, and fully respect the legislation currently in force.

READ: Archbishop Aguer: Celibacy is not the reason why we’re suffering a lack of priestly vocations

The question of clerical celibacy has often been raised, but especially so in recent years as activists look to introduce married clergy, posing it as a solution to the crisis of low numbers of priests in the West.

Clerical celibacy has also been particularly prominent in discussions surrounding the Amazon in light of the controversial Amazon Synod, which suggested that having married priests could be a “pastoral” solution for the region. A key accompanying aspect of that 2019 synod and the Amazon rite is the issue of married clergy, or viri probati, as proposed in Querida Amazonia – the document which emerged from the synod.

Other more heterodox prelates have similarly backed the notion, with Catholic bishops in Belgium and Germany arguing in favor of married clergy.

The Latin Rite of the Catholic Church does not permit for married clergy, albeit with some rare exceptions such as the married clergy of the Personal Ordinariate for former Anglicans.

However the Eastern Catholic Churches do permit the practice of married clergy, an aspect which has given further fuel to the fire of activists in the West.

In his 1992 apostolic exhortation on clerical formation Pastores Dabo Vobis, Pope John Paul II quoted the Second Vatican Council saying:

While in no way interfering with the discipline of the Oriental churches, the synod, in the conviction that perfect chastity in priestly celibacy is a charism, reminds priests that celibacy is a priceless gift of God for the Church and has a prophetic value for the world today.

In Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 post-apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, he wrote in defense of this teaching:

In union with the great ecclesial Tradition, with the Second Vatican Council and my Predecessors in the Petrine Ministry, I affirm the beauty and the importance of a priestly life lived in celibacy as an expressive sign of total and exclusive dedication to Christ, to the Church and to the Kingdom of God, and consequently confirm its obligatory character for the Latin tradition (n. 24).

READ: In defense of priestly celibacy

In 2018, Cardinal Robert Sarah – then-prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments – condemned the viri probati proposal, saying, “the plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, ‘pastoral reasons or necessities,’ would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition.”

He reiterated the same condemnation in 2019, in relation to the Amazon Synod:

If by a lack of faith in God and by an effect of pastoral short-sightedness the Synod for the Amazon were to decide on the ordination of viri probati, the fabrication of ministries for women and other such incongruities, the situation would be extremely serious.

The furor over the book penned by Sarah and then-emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, served to highlight just how polemic the question had become under the Francis pontificate. Critics accused the pair of working to try to undermine Pope Francis’ plans regarding married clergy in the Amazon.

Leo highlighted the Catholic Church’s condemnation and prohibition of the female diaconate during the 2023 session of the Synod on Synodality, but has not made any other notable public statements as yet regarding the Latin Rite discipline of clerical celibacy.