World National
©World National / Roger-Luc Chayer

Gay Spaniard Stripped of Priesthood

MADRID (Reuters) - A Catholic priest who scandalized the Spanish church by announcing his homosexuality in a gay magazine was stripped of the priesthood on Wednesday.

The Church said it was acting against Father Jose Mantero for abandoning his post and breaking his vow of celibacy.

Mantero, 39, from Valverde del Camino parish in Spain's rural southern province of Huelva, caused a sensation last week by coming out in the glossy gay magazine Zero in a challenge to long-standing church taboos on homosexuality.

A priest for 10 years, Mantero believes he is the first Spanish priest to publicly declare himself gay.

News reports said Mantero did not appear in his parish in the days following the interview, although he did show up on Spanish television on Tuesday evening to declare he wanted to continue being a priest but was not ready to renounce his homosexuality.

His announcement was greeted with a flurry of publicity in the Spanish media and the response of the Bishop of Huelva, Ignacio Noguer, did not take long in coming.

By suddenly leaving his post and breaking his vow of celibacy, Noguer said in a open letter, Mantero had placed himself "outside the discipline of the Church on a subject of extreme gravity and scandal for the faithful."

"This obliges me, not without deep regret, formally to withdraw all ministerial licenses from Mr. Jose Mantero," the bishop said.

Mantero told Zero magazine he had renounced celibacy. "I believed in it for seven years...but I was drowning in a pit," he said.

Mantero told a radio interviewer last week he hoped the interview would act as a seed "so that one day homophobic declarations disappear from the Church."

"Just as one feels a calling from God to become a priest...I felt that God could be calling on me...to ring Zero magazine," he added.

In his letter, the bishop said he had tried in vain for several days to talk to Mantero, but the facts were so clear that they called for the application of Church law.

He said the Church would continue trying to be a mother to all, so that, "those who err or distance themselves from it will always find its arms open to reconciliation and pardon."

A spokesman for the episcopal conference, Juan Jose Asenjo, said last week that the Catholic church regards homosexual sex as a sin but condemns discrimination against gay people. That aside, Mantero had broken the vow of celibacy, he said.

"I don't think it is plausible for a priest to live an active homosexual life," Asenjo said.

The Catholic Church still wields considerable influence in Spain, especially in rural areas.