How the birth of our son, the grandson of a priest, has caused me to give thanks for the cardinal who helped change the Church

As a child is born, the grandson of a priest, the boy’s father Vincent Doyle pays tribute to Cardinal Hummes who did so much for priests’ children and grandchildren around the world.

On June 29, I became a father to a beautiful boy, my son, our beautiful son. Conscious of his priestly heritage, I, with reverence and respect, remember this week, a man who did so much for priests’ children and grandchildren around the world, the late Cardinal Hummes.

“What you tell me about your work with the children of priests [is] very important to me.” – Cardinal Hummes to Coping, 2019.

The words of Cardinal Hummes, who died recently, to me in 2019, to Coping. He was both encouraging and open to what I spoke about with him at the time of the sex abuse summit in 2019. Indeed, this issue was important to him, and a decade earlier, he made a move that was pioneering, as confirmed by the Vatican Committee for Historical Sciences.

In 2019, I contacted His Eminence, having discovered that the Vatican guidelines for the children of priests were initially composed under his leadership during his tenure as Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy in 2009. Cardinal Stella notes:

“The [Congregation for Clergy] has been following a practice since the time when Cardinal Claudio Hummes was Prefect – for about ten years – who first brought to the attention of the Holy Father, at the time Benedict XVI, the cases of priests under 40 with offspring.”

Cardinal Hummes and I briefly interacted on the matter of the children of clergy. I found him to be a forward-thinking man, rooted in reality and scripture, unafraid of reaching out and engaging with those some discredit or would prefer did not exist!

The specific attention toward “priests under 40 with children”, as mentioned by Cardinal Beniamino Stella, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, in 2019, originates in Cardinal Hummes’ developments on this issue a decade earlier. His 2009 work was the first indication that 40 would become the cut-off age for priests to be able to remain in ministry and openly acknowledge their children, a development that occurred in 2020. The origins of all these developments are rooted in Cardinal Hummes’ 2009 leadership.

The late Cardinal Hummes was perhaps among the first to actualise and verbalise the needs of the suffering children of the ordained and religious; he made a plea to a sitting Pope, and this plea was listened to.

Fr Bernard Ardura, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences reflected earlier this month on the contributions of the late Cardinal Hummes: “I knew Cardinal Hummes well, even before he was a Cardinal, during the time he was a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture, of which I was Secretary. [...] I can testify to his uprightness, his sense of justice and his fidelity to the Church, which he served until the last day of his earthly life.”

I asked him: “The 2009 Vatican guidelines, composed under Benedict XVI, to your knowledge, is this the first time such guidelines have been composed?”

He replied: “To my knowledge, this is the first time.” 

Cardinal Hummes was the first Cardinal-Priest openly to acknowledge this issue, a side wound of the church one might consider, a wound affecting so many children. He was, the Vatican has confirmed, a priest who will go down in history for reaching out to marginalised and discarded children, “for the first time” in church history, and rightly so.

If only we all could do so well, if only we all had this under our proverbial belt on the final day, such courageous moves. Imagine the courage it would take for a Cardinal to approach a Pope, to speak about the children of priests. Indeed, the 2009 development says as much about the late Cardinal as it does about Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The guidelines Cardinal Hummes and Pope Benedict developed at the Congregation for Clergy, nurtured and developed further under Cardinal Stella and Pope Francis, was a seed that will continue to grow into full blossom beneath the glaring Mariological light of the Son, the late Cardinal's work continues. All goodness achieved on this sensitive issue, moving forward, may be traced, in part, to the courage of such men, most notably the late Cardinal Hummes.

As I stare across at my son, asleep in his cot, a priest's grandchild, I think of the work you did, Cardinal Hummes, to denounce stigma toward children and grandchildren of the clergy allowing them to live freely. The Cardinal’s work was much more than mere guidelines, it was a statement that the church will not tolerate stigma toward God’s creation, in particular, the children of the ordained, and to nurture any such stigma is an anti-Catholic sentiment and out of step with Catholicism.

Thank you, Eminence, for having the courage to say what is right, confirming both in the private and the public sphere that children of priests and religious were “very important” to you.

I pray that we remain in your prayerful heart as you rest upon the bosom of your heavenly Father, ever more cognisant of the need for the presence of a prayerful father for every child.