Pope Celibacy Rule: Is Pope Francis Changing The Celibacy Rule?

Newly elected Pope Francis said last year that the pope celibacy rule could change in the future. The pope admitted that the celibacy rule "can change" and even admitted to questioning his choices due to a "dazzling" young woman.

The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's comments were published in the Spanish-language book "On the Heavens and the Earth" and translated by the Catholic news website Aleteia. When recounting the young woman he met, Pope Francis was still the archbishop of Buenos Aires.

"When I was a seminarian, I was dazzled by a girl I met at an uncle's wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, her intellectual brilliance ... and, well, I was bowled over for quite a while. I kept thinking and thinking about her. When I returned to the seminary after the wedding, I could not pray for over a week because when I tried to do so, the girl appeared in my head. I had to rethink what I was doing," he said.

For now, though, "the discipline of celibacy stands firm," he said, adding that priests should quit if they can't abstain from sex or if they get a woman pregnant.

In terms of the change though, the pope did state that the married clergy of the Eastern churches are "very good priests" and those pushing for the same in Roman Catholicism do so "with certain pragmatism."

This progressive statement contrasts with the Pope's "anti-gay" beliefs that came to the surface when he championed against a gay-marriage bill in Argentina. Lastly, the pope added that celibacy is a "matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change."