Pope leads Easter rituals, slams reformists’ calls to ordain women

VATICAN CITY
Monsters and Critics

Apr 5, 2012

Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday marked the first of a series of traditional Easter rituals with a mass during which he criticized a group of Austrian clerics championing the ordination of women as priests in the Catholic church.

Benedict did not directly name the so-called Pfarrer-Intiative (Priest’s Initiative), which in recent years have also been pushing for the admittance of married men into the priesthood.

But in his homily – which dealt with the renewing by priests of their vows, including celibacy and obedience to Catholic teaching – Benedict noted how a ‘a group of priests from a European country’ have ‘issued a summons to disobedience.’

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