the story of three former priests from Cordoba who celebrate their day this Sunday

Transformed into proud fathers of their children with whom they knew how to forge powerful ties, for these men the decision to start a family implied at first “being out in the open” as excuras who had disappointed the expectations of the religious community to start a new life away from habits.

“I entered the seminary at the age of 18 and the first time I considered paternity was at 22, when my brother had his first child; because I was aware that he was renouncing my sexuality but not that he was also renouncing paternity ”, the Cordovan told Télam Adrian Vitaliwho was a priest for three years.

But the return to the seminary and its routines temporarily cleared up those questions that reappeared with force when, already ordained a priest, he fell in love with his partner in the prison ministry, with whom he began a hidden relationship that ceased to be when she became pregnant.

“Paternity surprised me because it was not planned but we lived it with great joy, beyond all the situation that entailed a priest having a child. There was no crisis or guilt or anything,” said Vitali, 55.

In it book “Five priests, silenced confessions”which he wrote together with other former priests, Vitali says that it took him four months to gather the courage to give his parents the double news – the resignation and the pregnancy -, that he was able to pay the mutual thanks to an inspiration with the Quiniela and that he could not avoid lying when he met a parishioner in the obstetrics waiting room for the first check-up.

“She took the test on Palm Sunday and that same night I left (from the parish), we got married in August and Bruno was born in November,” he said.

Vitali said that he did not feel compelled to leave the priestly ministry, but that it was “absolutely my decision” because “I did not want to deprive my son or my wife of my time”, despite the fact that this decision “involved staying at the weather of social life”.

“It was very hard afterward to prosecute my working life, as happens to all excuras,” he said.

On the other hand, Vitali assured that “the Church did not make it easy for him” because they tried to keep him by offering him a transfer to Europe and taking over the food quota “on the condition that he does not see them again” and then he had to wait 10 years for that the Pope granted him the dispensation that enabled him to marry in the Church, as finally happened in 2007.

Bruno, who was born in 1997, told Télam that his father’s past as a priest always lived “as the most normal thing in the world” and his 22-year-old brother Renzo will say the same.

“When I had to do catechetical homework in elementary school, I would consult him because I always knew he was a priest, but I didn’t feel it was something strange. And in high school I became aware that it was unusual because of the astonished face they put on when I counted, but nothing more, ”said this law student.

Both also agree to see celibacy as something “absurd.”

“My dad chose the path of being a priest because at the time it resonated with that but then it happened as it always happens in life, that things do not usually happen as one thinks and it is perfect that it is so, for a reason it also happened that way” contributed Renzo, an engineering student.

In case of Gustavo Glería (59) is quite particular because he continued to practice until four years after he began cohabiting with his current wife and mother of his two children, at a time when the eldest was three years old.

“I was convinced that I could be a priest and have a family. I don’t know if the people of the parish openly accepted it, but they didn’t condemn me”, said this ex-cure that he entered the seminary when he was 16 years old.

Gleria met his wife while he was the parish priest of the church where her parents attended regularly and for this reason they were first united by a great friendship before the love that has kept them together until now blossomed.

“As a boy I was very excited to change the world more than considering my fatherhood, that didn’t even cross my mind. Later I reconsidered it as a priest and when they changed my parish while I was already with my wife, we made the decision to have a child, ”he recounted.

Gleria explained that it was not his paternity that led him to leave the ministry, but the deterioration to which his relationship with the authorities of the Church had reached in full debate over the same-sex marriage that he supported.

“The fear that all of us who want to leave the priesthood have is not getting a job and in fact I stayed in ‘Pampa y la vía.’ It was very difficult for me to make my way, ”said the person who today works as a teacher in a school where, due to his academic training, he could be teaching any humanistic subject.

His family also made him feel the cold of rejection in the face of a life decision that they interpreted as “an insult”, and today the bond with them “is still quite broken”.

“I try to celebrate life every moment I spend with my family and that ‘every table is a mass,’ as the priesthood taught me. I have not come out hating the Church and, in fact, I have simply changed parishioners, because my (work) colleagues sometimes ask me things with great respect and I answer them without conveying my negative experiences to them, ”he said.

Her daughter Sara, who is in her fifth year at a school in the Cordoba town of Agua de Oro, said that “when she was younger she saw it as an advantage” to have an ex-cura father because she could “show off” him in catechism classes and they told her “Wow, your dad is a priest!”

“Currently it does not influence me at all because it is not that type of priest that is in mind, very strict or super Catholic, nothing to do with it,” he said.

For his part, Horace Fabregas He married his second marriage last year after a long first relationship from which his two daughters aged 28 and 23 were born.

“When I entered the seminary I felt like a hero capable of giving up many things for this, but deep down I lived it as a lack and when I had no more eggs to live celibacy, I said ‘I’m leaving’; I didn’t want a double life or offer myself halfway or hidden, ”he said.

And although it was “not in his original plans” to be a father, it was an experience “sublime, much bigger and more beautiful than I could have imagined.”

“I became a priest due to family influence and during my training period in the seminary several times I wanted to leave but I couldn’t face my mother. When I finally left, I was cut off from the family for many years,” she stated.

In dialogue with Télam, her daughter Valentina said that she had “a fairly normal childhood” and that if someone ever reacted in a prejudiced way when learning about her family history, “it never affected me because they are my parents and I know exactly how things went, that they lived a love story”.

“Among my schoolmates, there were always people curious about my story and now it still happens to me at the facu, every time the subject comes up. Lately I feel like I love having that ace up my sleeve that I can pull off and everyone is blown away,” she said.

One of the circumstances that most made her understand what her father put at stake when he resigned from the priesthood was meeting the priest who baptized her behind the counter of an ice cream parlor where he was working after having also left the ministry behind.

“I saw him and I went back to my dad, to what it would have been like to go out (to the world) and say ‘I don’t know how to do anything other than give mass.’ At 28 years old he had to learn a lot of things because the only thing he had done was be in church”, he added.

Today, what she most admires about her father is his “courage” and the good use he made of his “freedom” to “choose his own path” against all odds, two values ​​that “life taught him and he passed on to us.” ”.

*Telam Agency