Priest who broke celibacy vow joins Episcopal Church
(CNN) -- Father Alberto Cutie, an internationally known Catholic priest who admitted having a romantic affair and breaking his vow of celibacy, is joining the Episcopal Church to be with the woman he loves, he said Thursday. "I will always love the Catholic Church and all its members," he said at a news conference. "But I want to start today by going into a new family. "Here before this community where I have chosen to serve and where I live, I am going to continue to proclaim the word of God and my love for God," Cutie said.Cutie (pronounced koo-tee-AY) was received into the Episcopal Church earlier Thursday at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Miami, Florida. He will pursue the priesthood in the Episcopalian faith, the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida said in a written statement.
Father Cutie gets to have his cake and eat it too. So much for there being some sort of lesson learned by this for him.It was not immediately clear how long the process would take. Cutie -- sometimes called "Father Oprah" because of the advice he's given in Spanish-language media -- shocked the Catholic community when photographs of him embracing a bathing-suit-clad woman emerged this month in the pages of TV Notas magazine. The Cuban-American priest admitted having a two-year relationship with the woman, a long-time friend. She has not been publicly identified. "This is something I've struggled with," he said this month. "I don't support the breaking of the celibacy promise." Of his relationship with the woman, he said, "Through the photos, it looked like a frivolous thing on the beach, you know, and that's not what it is. It's something deeper than that." After the photographs surfaced, Cutie was removed from his duties at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Miami Beach and on the Radio Paz and Radio Peace Networks.
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