The Spanish parliament's socialist president Jose Bono criticised Monday the Catholic Church for its "clumsy" response to child abuse scandals and said he favoured ending clerical celibacy."The Church hierarchy is behaving clumsily by not stating clearly that a few rotten apples don't spoil the whole barrel, said Bono, himself a Catholic, when he appeared on Spanish television.
"How can the image that all priests are paedophiles be allowed to spread, it is insulting", he said, while stressing that cases of paedophilia should be condemned.
Bono also asked why celibacy was imposed on priests when "there are Catholic priests of the Oriental rite (who) are allowed to get married".
"If this is permitted in one part of the universal Catholic Church, why can it not be done in the rest?" he asked, referring to the Vatican's refusal to link enforced celibacy to paedophilia.
Spain, a country with a strong Catholic tradition, has not seen the sort of large-scale paedophile scandals that have rocked the Irish, German and US churches in the last few weeks.
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