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In November 2017, reports appeared that Pope Francis had requested marriage rights for Catholic priests. The article spread widely once again in April 2018. A representative article's headline reads: Pope Francis requests Roman Catholic priests be given the right to get married. However, the rather broad implications of this statement are contrasted with the more conditional, limited description presented in the article itself: In reality, Pope Francis has not made any public statement calling for or requesting broad marriage rights for all Catholic priests. Rather, others within the church hierarchy have reported that Francis has responded favorably to requests from bishops and cardinals that the church consider the possibility that already-married older men might, in limited circumstances, be ordained as Catholic priests — but only in Brazil, and only as a possible solution to the practical problem of a shortage in priests in Amazonian regions. In December 2016, the National Catholic Reporter reported comments made by the theologian Leonardo Boff, who claimed that Brazilian bishops, facing a severe shortage of priests, had requested that Pope Francis allow married, older men to be ordained as priests: A year later, the issue made news once again, after Brazilian cardinal Claudio Hummes told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that Francis had agreed to propose a debate on allowing married men to be ordained in the Amazonian region at an October 2019 meeting of bishops. In November 2017, the Catholic News Agency reported: In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit in March 2017, Pope Francis himself had already left open the possibility that the principle of viri probati might be implemented in certain remote areas. In comments translated by the Associated Press, Francis said:
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