Fineprint: Pope dismisses proposal to ordain married men as priests in Amazon

Pope Francis, in one of the most significant decisions of his papacy, on February 12 dismissed a proposal to allow some married men to be ordained in the Amazon region to ease an acute scarcity of priests. The recommendation, put forward by Latin American bishops last year, had alarmed conservatives in the deeply polarised 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, who feared it could lead to a change in the centuries-old commitment to celibacy among priests.