Priests answered to Lukashenka’s accusations about “mistakes on the side”

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ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST YURY SANKO
PHOTO: CATHOLIC.BY

Representatives of the Orthodox and Catholic churches have commented on the statements of Lukashenka about priests.

On the request of BelaPAN, representatives of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in Belarus comment on the statements about clerics, made by Alyaksandr Lukashenka on April 29 during the annual address to the Belarusian people and the parliament.
Touching upon the issue of demography, Lukashenka in particular said: in order to agitate for family, one should have own children. “I often criticize our clergy, not in a public way, especially the ones of the highest level. They are so ardent in advocating for and agitating for family values! When I ask: how many children does Your Holiness have? "None", is the answer. How can you agitate for a family if you have no children? One should have children to advocate for that. What an absurdity! Why a high priest should not have children? How could it be? I feel like someone is cheating me. I know it for sure. It is normal. One needs children to be a real human. One is not a human without children. Sometimes a person is ill. But not all children from our orphanages have been placed to families yet.”
The spokesperson of the Belarusian Orthodox Church archpriest Serhiy Lepin observed that monks vow celibacy, and priests with a rank of a bishop or higher are monks.
“A married priest cannot become a bishop without becoming a monk. All bishops of the Orthodox Church have no family according to rules. The head of the Belarusian Orthodox Church does not have a family, he is a monk,” Lepin said.
He also added: “We have no grounds to doubt that bishops of the Belarusian Orthodox Church preserve the vow of chastity and they live a godly life according to canons and moral teaching of the Orthodox Church.”
In his turn, a Roman Catholic Priest Yury Sanko who is an interim spokesperson of the Conference of Catholic priests in Belarus, said that all Catholic priests are not married, and consequently have no sexual life. “Chastity is one of the vows, which is made by a person knowingly, and it is very important for members of the Catholic Church,” father Yury Sanko said.
He noted that “priests are actively engaged in social work, they are teaching in Sunday schools, give support to families.” “A parish becomes a family for many of them. There is a family movement, which is supervised by priests, there is also a practice of spiritual fatherhood. Ministers help to raise their godchildren, giving an example by their words and deeds,” stressed the representative of the Belarusian Roman Catholic Church.

Kilde: http://charter97.org/en/news/2015/4/29/149577/