A Belgian bishop has renewed his push to ordain married men as priests in his diocese by 2028, despite no public Vatican authorization for the proposal.
In an interview in the October issue of Herder Korrespondenz, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp said he traveled to Rome in June to present the matter to the Dicastery for the Clergy and the General Secretariat of the Synod.
Bonny linked a possible arrangement to the Synod on Synodality’s implementation phase. “I trust that an appropriate arrangement can be found by the end of the synodal process in the fall of 2028,” Bonny said according to CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News. “It would be a fatal blow to the credibility and implementation of the entire synodal process if no arrangement were reached by then.”
Bonny first outlined his plans in March. He also participated in the German Synodal Way as an observer.
At the German bishops’ plenary assembly in 2022, Bonny said that “Rome must learn to live with a healthy dose of Germanic culture.” He referred to an open style of consultation and discussion, not the ordination of married men; the address was also released as a podcast.
Confidence in Pope Leo
The Vatican has not publicly commented on Bonny’s most recent remarks or announced any decision concerning his proposal.
Bonny told the German magazine he was continuing discussions within the Belgian bishops’ conference and holding conversations with potential candidates about further formation.
He said the Flemish dioceses faced a serious shortage of priests and that any step toward ordaining married men would need the agreement of both the Belgian bishops’ conference and the Vatican.
“How this step could take place with the agreement of the bishops’ conference and the Vatican is a question for the coming months,” Bonny said.
Bonny said canonists had told him canon law offered various lawful ways to address the question, but he did not identify a specific canonical mechanism or say Vatican officials had endorsed one.
He also said his confidence rested partly on Pope Leo XIV’s exercise of his office as a bridge-builder and on conversations with bishops in several countries and continents whom he said faced similar circumstances.
Under Canon 1042 of the Code of Canon Law, a man who has a wife is impeded from receiving sacred orders except when he is legitimately destined for the permanent diaconate. A diocesan bishop cannot unilaterally set aside that impediment or introduce a different priestly-ordination discipline in his diocese.
David Long, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America and a canonist, told EWTN News in March that the question of ordaining married men “does not lie within the authority of a diocesan bishop acting on his own.”
“Any current change in practice in a Latin diocese would require action by the Holy See and could not be accomplished by a unilateral decision by a diocesan bishop, no matter how pastorally urgent the circumstances may be,” he said.