Catholic canon law, specifically Canon 277 §1, requires that clerics "observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and therefore are bound to celibacy, which is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and are able to dedicate themselves more freely to the service of God and humanity."; for this reason, priests in Catholic dioceses make vows of celibacy at their ordination, thereby agreeing to remain unmarried and abstinent throughout their lives.

The 1961 document Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders states that homosexual men should not be ordained at all.Instruction on the Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders. February 2, 1961. In 2005, the Church clarified that men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" could not be ordained; the Vatican followed up in 2008 with a directive to implement psychological screening for candidates for the priesthood. Conditions listed for exclusion from the priesthood include "uncertain sexual identity" and "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". Despite church teachings, many Catholic clergy have engaged in homosexual relations, a fact which is known to the Vatican. Independent studies and observer estimates suggest that roughly 30% to 40% of priests in the United States may be gay, with higher informal estimates sometimes cited for specific regions or Vatican offices. Very few active priests are openly public about their sexual orientation due to church discipline and fear of retribution from leadership.

Church directives

Careful Selection and Training of Candidates (1961) The 1961 papal document entitled Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders stated that homosexual men should not be ordained, saying that "religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers".

Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations (2005) In November 2005, the Vatican completed an Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders. Publication was made through the Congregation for Catholic Education. According to the new policy, men with "transitory" homosexual leanings may be ordained deacons following three years of prayer and chastity. However, men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" or who are sexually active cannot be ordained. No new moral teaching was contained in the instruction: the instruction proposed by the document was rather towards enhancing vigilance in barring gay men from seminaries, and from the priesthood. As the title of the document indicates, it concerned exclusively candidates with homosexual tendencies, and not other candidates.

While the preparation for this document had started 10 years before its publication,"'Nothing Extraordinary'? " in Inside the Vatican (ISSN 1068-8579), January 2006 this instruction has been seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to several sex scandals involving priests in the late 20th/early 21st century, including the American Roman Catholic sex abuse cases and a 2004 sex scandal in a seminary at St. Pölten (Austria).In New York Times: "World Briefing: Europe: Austria: Seminary Sex Scandal" (July 13, 2004) "World Briefing: Europe: Austria: Conviction In Seminary Sex Scandal" (August 14, 2004)

The document has attracted criticism based on an interpretation that the document implies that homosexuality is associated with pedophilia or with sexual abuse more generally."Statement From The Board Of Directors and Staff of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries" November 29, 2005. Accessed June 18, 2007 There have been some questions on how distinctions between deep-seated and transient homosexuality, as proposed by the document, would be applied in practice: the actual distinction that is made might be between those who abuse and those who do not.

Two months before his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II, troubled by the sex scandals in the US, Austria, and Ireland, had written to the Congregation for Catholic Education: "Right from the moment young men enter a Seminary their ability to live a life of celibacy should be monitored so that before their ordination one should be morally certain of their sexual and emotional maturity."Quoted in "'Nothing Extraordinary'? " in Inside the Vatican (ISSN 1068-8579), January 2006

Implementation The Belgian college of bishops elaborated that the sexual restrictions for seminary and priesthood candidates apply equally to men of all sexual orientations.Press communication of the Belgian bishops (29 November 2005): "A propos de la recente instruction concernant l'admission de candidats à la prêtrise" – Regarding the recent instruction concerning the admission of candidates for priesthood The Vatican followed up in 2008 with a directive to implement psychological screening for candidates for the priesthood. Conditions listed for exclusion from the priesthood include "uncertain sexual identity" and "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has been quoted as saying that the Vatican's directive was not simply a "no-gays" policy.

Opposition to gay clergy Over recent years Catholics on the religious right have tried to connect the incidence of homosexuality within the priesthood to the sexual abuse scandal facing the Church arguing, according to gay social critic Andrew Sullivan, that the direct root "was not abuse of power, or pedophilia, or clericalism, or the distortive psychological effects of celibacy and institutional homophobia, but gayness itself".

Cardinal Raymond Burke has called for the Church to be "purified" of its "homosexual culture". Bishop Robert Morlino of Wisconsin has suggested a "homosexual subculture" was wreaking devastation and the Church therefore needed to show "more hatred of homosexual sexual behavior". Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute has suggested removing all gay clergy from the church, even though this might cause a shortage of priests.

Estimating numbers

Historical incidence of homosexual clergy

In Adomnan of Iona's biography of Columba there is an anecdotal story about two priests with a strong attachment to one another "in a carnal way". One was Findchan, described as the founder of the monastery of "Scotic Artchain" in Tiree. The other priest was Aed Dub.Adomnan of Iona, Life of St Columba, Penguin books, 1995, pp138-139

Peter Damian, in the 11th century, wrote a book called the about homosexuality among the clergy in his own time period. He harshly condemned homosexual practice among the clergy.

In 1102, Anselm of Canterbury demanded that the punishment for homosexuality should be moderate because "this sin has been so public that hardly anyone has blushed for it, and many therefore have plunged into it without realising its gravity". It is argued that probably only in the 12th and 13th centuries that a mass condemnation of homosexuality began in Europe. This condemnation moderated considerably in the final decade of the twentieth century with the distinction now made by Catholic church authorities between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity—forbidding the latter while regarding the former as intrinsically disordered but not sinful in and of itself.

Inside the Vatican

Pope Francis has directly faced questions from journalists about whether a "gay lobby" effectively operates within the Vatican itself, and investigative journalists have caught several high-ranking Vatican clerics engaging in homosexual sexual activity or relationships.

In October 2015, on the day before the second round of the Synod on the Family, a senior Polish priest working in the Vatican, Krzysztof Charamsa, stated publicly in Italy's newspaper that he was gay and had a long-term partner.Corriera della Sera. Vatican Theologian Confesses: «I'm Happy to Be Gay and I Have a Partner». By doing so he had intended to draw attention to the Church's current attitude towards gay Catholics which he felt was regressive and damaging. In his resignation letter he thanked Pope Francis for some of his words and gestures towards the gay community; however, he also strongly criticized the institution of the Catholic Church for being "frequently violently homophobic" and "insensitive, unfair and brutal" towards people that are gay, noting the irony that he felt there were significant numbers of gay men active at all levels within the Church (including the cardinalate). He called for all statements from the Holy See that are offensive and violent against gay people to be withdrawn, citing Pope Benedict XVI's signature of the 2005 document that forbids men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies from becoming priests as particularly "diabolical".

United States Studies find it difficult to quantify specific percentages of Roman Catholic priests who have a homosexual orientation (either openly gay or closeted) in the United States. Nevertheless, several studies suggest that the incidence of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood is much higher than in the general population as a whole.Attorney: priests claim 70 percent of U.S. bishops are gay

Studies by James Wolf and by Richard Sipe from the early 1990s suggest that the percentage of priests in the Catholic Church who admitted to being gay or were in homosexual relationships was well above the national average for the country.J. Wolf, Gay Priests, New York, 1989; R. Sipe, A Secret World: sexuality and the search for celibacy, New York, 1990 Elizabeth Stuart, a former convener of the Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian movement claimed, "It has been estimated that at least 33 percent of all priests in the RC Church in the United States are homosexual."Stuard, Elizabeth. Roman Catholics and Homosexuality, quoted by Kate Saunders in Catholics and Sex.

The John Jay Report published in 2004 suggested that "homosexual men entered the seminaries in noticeable numbers from the late 1970s through the 1980s".

Another report suggested that from the mid-1980s onwards, Catholic priests in the US were dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than that of the general population, with most of the cases contracted through gay sex, and the cause often concealed on their death certificates. A follow-up study the next year by the Kansas City Star found the AIDS-related death rate among priests was "more than six times" the rate among the general population in the 14 states studied. The report gained widespread coverage in the media, but the study was criticized as being unrepresentative and having "little, if any, real value". Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Archdiocese of Detroit, has suggested that this was because, "Gay priests and heterosexual priests didn't know how to handle their sexuality, their sexual drive. And so they would handle it in ways that were not healthy." Additionally, the report suggested that some priests and behavioral experts believed the Church had "scared priests into silence by treating homosexual acts as an abomination and the breaking of celibacy vows as shameful". Gumbleton has gone on to argue that the Church should openly ordain gay men.

A 2002 Los Angeles Times nationwide poll of 1,854 priests (responding) reported that: 9% of priests identified themselves as gay, and 6% identified themselves as "somewhere in between but more on the homosexual side".