The New York Times and other media outlets reported that the Italian bishops, approved by the Vatican, allowed gay men to become priests if they remain celibate.

Vatican Allows Italian Gay Men to Train to Be Priests, if They Remain Celibate. Candidates for the seminary should not be disqualified based on sexual orientation, according to new church guidelines in Italy. https://t.co/bViTuc0sAI

— alain servais (@aservais1) January 13, 2025

Verdict: Misleading

While the document states “the formative process, when referring to homosexual tendencies, it’s also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect,” it does not state that the Italian bishops allowed gay men to become seminarians. The Italian Bishops Conference also pushed back on reports saying so.

Fact Check:

The New York Times and other outlets, such as Reuters and the Guardian, reported that recent guidelines published by the Italian Bishops Conference allowed gay men to become priests as long as they’re celibate. (RELATED: Did Pope Francis Say That Jesus Was Born During A Census Taken By King David?)

“Vatican Allows Italian Gay Men to Train to Be Priests, if They Remain Celibate,” reads The New York Times headline. It based its claim on a line from the recently published guidelines, which says when “referring to homosexual tendencies in the formation process, it is also appropriate not to reduce the discernment to this aspect alone but, as with any candidate, to understand its meaning within the overall picture of the young person’s personality.”

This claim is misleading. The Italian Bishops Conference pushed back on the media reporting. In a statement published in its newspaper, it stated that “rules on non-admission of homosexual persons to the priesthood do not change.”

It further stated that “this new intervention became necessary after a partial and non-contextualized reading of paragraph 44 of the document by some outlets, which deals precisely with the issue of homosexuality in the formation path of seminaries.”

Bishop Stefano Manetti, president of the Episcopal Commission for the Clergy and Consecrated Life, said in the article that “[t]he real novelty of the document, in fact, is the attention that the new norms place on ‘discernment’ in particular in the first three years of the formative path.”

“[I]t means putting the person at the center beyond immediate categorizations to be able to accompany him in making truth about his sexual orientation,” Manetti further said. (RELATED: Does This Photo Show Pope Francis Wearing An Oversized White Puffer Coat?)

Furthermore, the document restates what two Vatican documents, released in 2005 and 2016, said about admitting men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies,” according to the Pillar.

“The Italian text repeated guidance from two Vatican dicasteries which explains that formators’ cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture,”” the Pillar reported.

The full guidelines reads, per Catholic Culture:

“44. ‘In relation to persons with homosexual tendencies who seek admission to Seminary, or discover such a situation in the course of formation, consistent with her own Magisterium, the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’. Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women.” In the formation process, when reference is made to homosexual tendencies, it is also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect, but, as for every candidate, to grasp its meaning in the global framework of the young person’s personality, so that, by knowing himself and integrating the objectives proper to the human and priestly vocation, he arrives at a general harmony. The objective of the formation of the candidate for the priesthood in the affective-sexual sphere is the ability to accept as a gift, to freely choose and to live responsibly chastity in celibacy. In fact, it “is not simply a sign of affection, but the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love. A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts and makes for misery. God himself loved humanity with a chaste love; he left us free even to go astray and set ourselves against him”. Furthermore, ‘celibacy for the Kingdom should be understood as a gift to be recognized and verified in freedom, joy, gratuitousness and humility, before admission to candidacy or first profession’. This does not only mean controlling one’s sexual impulses, but growing in a quality of evangelical relationships that overcomes the forms of possessiveness, that does not allow oneself to be seized by competition and comparison with others and knows how to guard with respect the boundaries of one’s own and others’ intimacy. Being aware of this is fundamental and indispensable to realizing the priestly commitment or vocation, but those who live the passion for the Kingdom in celibacy should also become capable of addressing, in renunciation for it, frustrations, including the lack of emotional and sexual gratification.”

J.D Flynn, the editor in chief of the Pillar, wrote on Jan. 14 that “the misinterpreted text in question was something of a word salad, the kind of episcopal-conference-speech that is hard to parse in the first place, or find meaning in, but according to the conference, there was no intention to deviate from the Church’s policy regarding homosexuality and reports to the contrary were, in a word, fake news.”

The traditionalist Catholic website Rorate Caeli stated that the seemingly new instructions from the Italian bishops’ document were “not much different from the overall tone of the following paragraphs of the 2005 Instruction (cf. for instance, the long words on ‘discernment’ of chapter 3 of that 2005 document — which leave much to the interpretation of the local ordinaries and seminary administrators).”

The 2005 document also states that “[d]ifferent, however, would be the case in which one were dealing with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem – for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded. Nevertheless, such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.”

The new guidelines appear to have been taken offline. They can be viewed here.

Check Your Fact reached out to The New York Times and the Holy See’s Press Office for comment.