Can a man, who married outside the Catholic religion and is divorced, become a priest?
by 
Marguerite
ANSWERS: 2
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A man who married outside of the Catholic church and is STILL married can become a Roman Catholic priest. And a man who marries in the Catholic church can be ordained as a priest. There are several Catholic priests who started out as married Anglican or Orthodox priests before converting to Catholicism. Furthermore, in some of the Eastern Rites, such as the Byzantine Rite, married men can become priests. The problem is the divorce. It depends on whether the Church views the marriage as valid or not. The Church recognizes Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran marriages as sacramentally valid, so if the marriage was carried out in one of those Churches, an annulment would be necessary before ordination could take place.
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I know a Roman Catholic priest with wife and children. He used to be an Old Catholic (is that the right term?) priest, and so was allowed to marry. He converted to Roman Catholicism, and of course the Catholic Church couldn't ask him to get a divorce, could they? - I have no idea though how it came that he, still, was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.
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