Live News From Spain As It Happens

'DOZENS' of Catholic priests in Spain are married, but bishops turn a 'blind eye', according to the Church amid calls by women who have vicars as husbands to scrap the 'celibacy rule'.

Although the Church will not revel the full figures, around 6,000 priests in Spain are married and, worldwide, some 100,000.

Bishops allegedly turn a blind eye to this in Spain provided the vicar in question does not appear in the media, does not attempt to 'convert' others to giving up celibacy and it does not compromise his faith.

The 'celibacy law' was passed in the year 1139, although it was rarely adhered to before the mid-16^th century and even then amid great resistance, and was purely for financial reasons – unmarried priests with no children would leave all their worldly goods to the Church when they died.

It was continued because it is easier to feed and maintain 400,000 priests who are single than their wives and children as well, and it means priests are more at liberty to travel around and work in different dioceses or abroad as missionaries.

But in fact, all bar two of the Apostles were married and Jesus did not mention anything about how preachers should be single and celibate – and Pope Francisco says the rule is 'an open issue' and 'not a faith dogma'.

Early Christian communities even had married bishops and these were mentioned in the New Testament.

In Anglican, Orthodox, Lutheran or other Protestant Churches, celibacy and singlehood is optional, but the Catholic Church makes it a conditio sine qua non of being a priest, meaning if a congregation leader wants to marry, he must resign.

In Africa and Latin America, in Catholic communities, many priests live with their wives in their rectories but have certain rules they must abide by, including always wearing their dog-collars, and their wedding rings on their ring finger at all times.

One of the most recent cases to be made public was Rev. Evans D. Gliwitzki, parish priest of the Espíritu Santo church of Los Gigantes in Tenerife, who is married to a woman named Patricia, has two daughters and three grandchildren.

Another is Oleksandr Dorykevych, a Ukraine-born priest in Torrevieja (Alicante) with a wife and three children, and Ramón Alario, who is Spanish but had to hang up his cassock and find another job to be able to marry his wife – he now only leads congregations in secrecy in very small parish communities on request.