Vatican confirms ban on Catholics changing into Freemasons

VATICAN CITY, Nov 15 (Reuters) – The Vatican has confirmed a ban on Catholics changing into Freemasons, a centuries-old secretive society that the Catholic Church has lengthy considered with hostility and has an estimated international membership of as much as six million.

“Energetic membership in Freemasonry by a member of the trustworthy is prohibited, due to the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry,” the Vatican’s doctrinal workplace mentioned in a letter printed by Vatican media on Wednesday.

The division, often called the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Religion, issued its opinion, dated Nov. 13 and countersigned by Pope Francis, in response to a bishop from the Philippines alarmed by the rising variety of Freemasons in his nation.

The identical workplace mentioned final week that transgender folks may be baptized, function godparents and act as witnesses at Catholic weddings.

The letter on Freemasons cited a 1983 declaration, signed by the late Pope Benedict XVI, on the time the Vatican’s doctrine chief, stating that Catholics “in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and should not obtain Holy Communion”.

Masonic lodges are usually male-only societies, related to arcane symbols and rituals. They’ve additionally typically been linked to conspiracy theories alleging undue affect on world affairs.

In response to the United Grand Lodge of England, fashionable Freemasonry “is without doubt one of the oldest social and charitable organisations on the earth”, rooted within the traditions of medieval stonemasons.

The group says it has 180,000 male members, with two parallel feminine lodges in England having one other 5,000 members, and estimates international Freemasonry membership at round six million.

It lists the late Queen Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, late actor Peter Sellers, former England soccer supervisor Alf Ramsey and authors Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle as well-known Freemasons from the previous.

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