Support for priest who quits to wed PDF Print E-mail
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Thursday, 16 August 2007 20:37
AUSTRIA
THE DIOCESE of Innsbruck is supporting a Tyrolean parish priest and
continuing to pay him after he has resigned to marry his partner and the
mother of his three-year-old son, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. Parishioners were furious and parish councillors threatened to quit when
they learned that their priest, Fr Roland Walch, 46, felt he had to
resign from the priesthood in order to live with his partner and son.
They have now covered the altar and pews of the parish church with white
banners bearing the words "Stay with us" in large red letters.

Diocesan chancellor Fr Hermann Steidl said that after several long and
intensive talks with the vicar general and the bishop, Fr Walch had
decided to resign from the priesthood and stand by his partner and son.
"Both, that is a family and the priesthood, are not possible in the
Catholic Church," Fr Steidl emphasised. "I can understand the uproar and
we, too, regret that he is leaving the priesthood. Every priest who
leaves is one too many."

Fr Steidl said that the diocese is supporting the priest by continuing
to pay Fr Walch and helping him to find housing and work, possibly
teaching RE or as a pastoral assistant. He said it was regrettable that
no solution had been found for this problem in regions where there was
an acute shortage of priests.

Fr Walch said he knew at least four other priests in his diocese who had
partners and children. There is also a married Lutheran pastor with four
children who recently converted to Catholicism and has been ordained a
Catholic priest (see The Tablet, 14 July).
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