MONTREAL, Feb 16 (AFP) - The archbishop of Montreal dropped Monday a plan to require candidates for priesthood to take HIV tests.
"The implementation of such a test is ruled out for the foreseeable future," Archbishop Jean-Claude Turcotte, a cardinal, said in a statement.
"No written directive requiring HIV tests was ever was ever carried," Turcotte said.
When he announced the controversial plan last month, Turcotte told reporters that being HIV positive could affect someone's chance to enter the priesthood.
"If a person, because of HIV, cancer or another serious disease, cannot serve his vocation, we will tell this person that (priesthood) is not an option," he said last month.
Turcotte said he was not discriminating against gays.
"Somebody's sexual orientation is not what counts for the church -- it's a person's ability to live in celibacy that counts," he said last month.
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