Church in talks with priests' mistresses

The Catholic Church has opened contacts with support groups for priests' mistresses.

The Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Rev Christopher Budd, has been asked formally by the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales to talk to the groups, and last week visited one of them.

The Bishop's negotiations mark a considerable shift in the attitude of the English Catholic church towards openness, and widens the gulf between the English and the Scottish hierarchies when it comes to dealing with failures of celibacy.

Bishop Budd told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Where you have relationships which are clandestine and somebody is still in priestly ministry, the truth must come out and the priest concerned must actually accept that truth and move out of ministry and do what he can to support either the woman or woman and children.

"After all, if a priest has fathered a child by a woman in some ways he is personally responsible and that means he may have to leave ministry and earn sufficient to support the child and the mother."

The Bishop held out the possibility of church funds being used to support the children of priests who stay in the ministry.

A spokesman for the Bishops' Conference said yesterday: "Cases of this kind have always arisen in the life of the church, but their frequency should not be exaggerated.

"Most, though unfortunately not all, have been and are responsibly and discreetly handled, having regard to the best interests of those involved, especially any children."

The admission that "not all" such relationships had been handled in the best interests of the women and children involved drew an extravagant laugh from one of the women who has met Bishop Budd, and who is herself the mother of two small children by a priest.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, said: "A lot of the damage is clearly already done. A lot of guys have continued in ministries knowing that they have responsibilities: whether a woman who has had an abortion, or the child has been adopted. There is a double-standard being adopted: he is minstering and saying the Mass, yet leading a secret life. This has to be bad for the church."

It appears that the policy for dealing with these cases varies from diocese to diocese. Catholic bishops have a considerable degree of administrative independence.

A member of the Sunflower group, one of those to which Bishop Budd has been talking, said: "In some dioceses. the priest may be encouraged to go into a rehabilitation as if he was some kind of drug addict. Many priests would be offered the chance of going abroad - the relationship with the woman remains secret, even though she could be in the church, and even in orders herself. But the first responsibility should be to the woman."