VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Vatican published its long-awaited document on gays in the priesthood yesterday, affirming that men with “deep-seated” gay tendencies should not be ordained, but that those with a “transitory problem” could be if they had overcome it for three years.

The official release of the “Instruction” from the Congregation for Catholic Education came a week after an Italian Catholic news agency posted a leaked copy on its web site.

Reaction has been mixed since the document was leaked, with conservatives saying it may help reverse the “gay culture” that has grown in many US seminaries, and more liberal critics complaining that the restrictions will create morale problems among existing priests and lead to an even greater priest shortage in the United States.

Some observers have also raised questions about just what the document means by a “deep-seated homosexual tendency,” since a definition is not provided.

The head of the education congregation defended the document as a clear reflection of church teaching, saying “in this field, in today’s world, there is some confusion”.

“Many defend the position according to which the homosexual condition is a normal condition for the human being, as if it were nearly a third gender,” Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski told Vatican Radio.

He also made clear the “Instruction” is intended for candidates for the priesthood and not someone who “discovers his homosexuality after having been ordained”.

The cardinal said such a priest “has to try to live in chastity … maybe he will need more spiritual support than others, but I think he should be a priest in the best way possible”.

The Rev Timothy Radcliff, former superior of the Dominican order, wrote in the British Catholic weekly, the Tablet, that the phrase could be interpreted as concerning men with a “permanent homosexual orientation”.

“But this cannot be correct since, as I have said, there are many excellent priests who are gay and who clearly have a vocation from God.”

“Having worked with bishops and priests, diocesan and religious, all over the world, I have no doubt that God does call homosexuals to the priesthood, and they are among the most dedicated and impressive priests I have met,” he wrote.

Pope Benedict XVI approved the “Instruction” from the Congregation for Catholic Education on August 31 and ordered it published – one of the first major documents he has approved for release since being elected pope April 19.

The document has been years in the works, but its existence came to light in 2002 at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the United States. A study commissioned by US bishops found that most abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys.

Experts on sex offenders say homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest young people, but that did not stifle questions about gay seminarians.

The document restates church teaching that deep-seated homosexual tendencies are “objectively disordered” but that gays should be treated with respect and shouldn’t be discriminated against.

“In light of such teaching … the church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture,”‘ it says.

Such men can’t be priests because they are in a situation that “gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women,” it says.

But it distinguishes such men from others with homosexual tendencies “that were only the expression of a transitory problem – for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded”.

“Nevertheless, such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate,” it says.

The document is short – nine pages including the title page and footnotes that make up the bulk of the text.