A Catholic priest in northern Italy has revived the debate about clerical celibacy by confessing to have fallen in love with a separated mother.
Father Sante Sguotti of Monterosso near Padua told reporters on Tuesday that his beloved's name was Laura and that he wanted them to become officially engaged in December.
"I have known Laura for more than eight years, but not in the biblical sense. I am in love with this woman and I helped her choose her child's name," the priest said.
But he stressed that their relationship would remain a chaste one because he did not want to jeopardise his job.
"Canon law does not forbid a priest to fall in love or become engaged in a celibate manner. I want to remain in the Church and so I will obey the celibacy rule," Sguotti said.
He also urged other priests who were in love to "come forward" and break their silence.
Sguotti triggered alarm among his superiors earlier this month by implying that he was the father of his girlfriend's one-year-old child.
The local bishop subsequently told Sguotti he expected him to quit, to the dismay of most of the priest's 800 parishioners, who are understanding of his predicament.
But Sguotti said on Tuesday that he had been joking and had simply wanted to provoke debate about the need for priestly celibacy.
"This is the first time I have been in love since becoming a priest. I believe it's a fundamental stage in life. A person can't be a good priest or nun or anything else in life unless he has experienced love at least once," he said.
"Life in the seminary, where all contact with women is forbidden and you are banned from going to bars, swimming pools and movies, is wrong because it warps your personality," Sguotti continued.
He also argued that the Church's celibacy requirement meant that "only the most closed and narrow-minded priests, the least humane ones, get ahead".
"The Church is losing the best part of itself," Sguotti said.
The Vatican has never shown any sign of altering its long tradition of demanding celibacy from priests, despite calls for a rethink from dissidents in the US and elsewhere.
Late last year Pope Benedict XVI rejected a request from excommunicated Zambian archbishop Emmanuel Milingo to accept married priests into the Catholic Church.
"The value of the choice of priestly celibacy was reaffirmed, in line with Catholic tradition," a Vatican statement said after the pope discussed the issue with top aides.
The statement came after the once-married Milingo wrote an open letter to the pope, urging immediate steps to allow married priests in the Catholic Church.
He said the Church was in "dire straits" because of a vocation crisis and that allowing priests to marry would help resolve the shortage.
Milingo has founded an association of like-minded clerics to promote his cause. The organisation - called Married Priests Now! - says about 150,000 Catholic priests have left the Church in order to marry.
Monsignor Milingo was excommunicated last September after he presided over an unauthorised ceremony in Washington to consecrate four married priests as bishops.
The elderly churchman came close to excommunication in 2001 by defecting to a sect and marrying a Korean acupuncturist.
That time he was persuaded to return to the church and to abandon his wife by the late John Paul II.
The first pope, Saint Peter, as well as many subsequent popes, bishops, and priests during the church's first 270 years were in fact married men and often fathers.
