02/07/2002 "Gay Spaniard stripped of priesthood "

Gay Spaniard stripped of priesthood
- Reuters

A Catholic priest who scandalised the Spanish church by announcing his homosexuality in a gay magazine has been stripped of his priesthood.

The Church said today it was acting against Father Jose Mantero for abandoning his post and breaking his vow of celibacy.

Mantero, 39, from Valverde del Camino parish in Spain's rural southern province of Huelva, caused a sensation last week by coming out in the glossy gay magazine Zero in a challenge to long-standing church taboos on homosexuality.

A priest for 10 years, Mantero believes he is the first Spanish priest to publicly declare himself gay.

News reports said Mantero did not appear in his parish in the days following the interview, although he did show up on Spanish television on Tuesday evening to declare he wanted to continue being a priest but was not ready to renounce his homosexuality.

His announcement was greeted with a flurry of publicity in the Spanish media and the response of the Bishop of Huelva, Ignacio Noguer, did not take long in coming.

By suddenly leaving his post and breaking his vow of celibacy, Noguer said in an open letter, Mantero had placed himself "outside the discipline of the Church on a subject of extreme gravity and scandal for the faithful".

"This obliges me, not without deep regret, formally to withdraw all ministerial licences from Mr Jose Mantero," the bishop said.

Mantero told Zero magazine he had renounced celibacy. "I believed in it for seven years...but I was drowning in a pit," he said.

Mantero told a radio interviewer last week he hoped the interview would act as a seed "so that one day homophobic declarations disappear from the Church".