Andrew Medichini / AP
Per the AP, Pope Francis has expressed an openness to examining the possibility that married men in remote communities might be allowed to join the priesthood.
The times they are a-changin': The Catholic Church's discipline of clerical celibacy has been in place for nearly two thousand years, though the Church does already allow some exceptions — priests in eastern rite Catholicism and previously married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.
A New World pope: Francis, hailing from Argentina, is acutely aware of the problems faced by a massively Catholic country like Brazil, where there's one priest for every ten thousand Catholics in the Amazon region.