EUROPE: GERMANY: LUTHERAN CONVERT ORDAINED CATHOLIC PRIEST

CATH NEWS REPORT:

Image from the homepage of Harm Klueting

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A Lutheran convert was ordained as a Catholic priest in Germany this week and is being allowed to remain married to his wife who is already a Carmelite nun, said a Fox News report.


Pope Benedict gave him a special permission to remain married to his wife Edeltraut Klueting, who became a Catholic Carmelite nun in 2004. The couple has two grown children.Harm Klueting, 61, was ordained by Archbishop Joachim Cardinal Meisner in a private ceremony at the city's seminary on Tuesday, the Cologne archdiocese said.

"It doesn't happen every day," noted Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

The report adds that Klueting and his family could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear whether they still lived together as a couple.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII first allowed clergymen who had converted to Catholicism to remain married, the Cologne diocese said in its statement. However, each case has to be approved by the pope himself, the statement said, adding that in the past married priests also had been ordained in the German cities of Hamburg and Regensburg.

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=25153

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