PORTLAND (AP) — Maine’s newest Roman Catholic priest has a wife and four grown children.
Sixty-two-year-old David Affleck of York was ordained this month under a 1980 papal provision that allows former married Episcopal clergy to become priests in the Catholic church.
When ordained at Portland’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Affleck became only the third married man to join the Catholic priesthood in Maine since the 1980 papal provision. He is now the only married Catholic priest.
Church officials say only a handful of former married Episcopal clergy are ordained as Catholic priests in the U.S. each year.
Affleck tells the Portland Press Herald he left the Episcopal church and joined the Catholic ranks about five years ago.
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