The Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy is to give bishops new powers that will make it easier to discipline priests. The measures will speed up the process of laicisation for priests who are living with women, have left active ministry for several years or who have engaged in seriously scandalous behaviour.
Cases involving clerical sex abuse will be dealt with separately.
The Congregation's prefect, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, said that one reason for the measures was to help children fathered by priests.
The move is also aimed at restoring credibility, confidence and prestige in a celibate priesthood in the light of a growing number of sexual scandals involving Catholic clergy, including bishops. It is being made public as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to launch the Year for Priests.
Cardinal Hummes informed bishops around the world of the new procedures in a recently revealed private letter dated 18 April. The most significant change is that bishops will now be able effectively and unilaterally to "defrock" priests who have abandoned their ministry for more than five years but have not formally requested laicisation. The 1983 Code of Canon Law makes no provision for a bishop to begin procedures to remove such priests without their cooperation or consent.
"If the one who left is not interested [in regularising his situation], the good of the Church and the good of the priest who left is that he be dispensed so that he would be in a correct situation, especially if he has children," Cardinal Hummes told Catholic News Service. In the case of seriously scandalous behaviour he insisted that bishops had to "carry out a careful investigation of the facts" and first "proceed formally to correct or admonish the accused" before initiating procedures for dismissal. He also insisted that the priest's "right to defend himself [was] sacred".
Pope Benedict will open the Year for Priests in an ornate ceremony on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in St Peter's Basilica. The Pope is scheduled to preside at Second Vespers in the presence of a reliquary containing the heart of St John Vianney. This is the 150th anniversary year of the French saint's death and the Pope plans to declare him Patron of All Priests.
In a separate letter to all priests to mark the initiative Cardinal Hummes said, "It must be a year that is both positive and forward-looking, in which the Church says to her priests above all, but also to all the faithful and to wider society by means of the mass media, that she is proud of her priests, loves them, honours them, admires them and that she recognises with gratitude their pastoral work and the witness of their life."
Prominent churchmen - Cardinal Hummes among them - in recent years have said that the possibility of married priests for the Western Church should at least be up for discussion. On the eve of relinquishing his pastoral duties as Archbishop of São Paulo in Brazil in late 2006 and taking up his current Vatican position, the cardinal said priestly celibacy was "not a dogma" and its usefulness could be "reflected on" in the Church. But on arrival in Rome he was forced to retract the statement and, since then, he and other Vatican officials - including Pope Benedict - have confirmed that the issue is not up for discussion.
But Cardinal Hummes' number two at the Congregation for the Clergy, Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, said in his own letter to priests around the world that reaffirming clerical celibacy is fundamental to the year-long observance. Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI last Saturday told seminarians and formation staff of the French College in Rome that "the attitudes required of future priests are many: human maturity, spiritual qualities, apostolic zeal and intellectual rigour". He told the priesthood candidates that "if the Church is demanding of them, it is because they must take care of those who Christ, at such a high cost, has drawn to himself".