Pope Francis's new interview with an Italian newspaper has raised hints about a possible opening on the controversial issue of married priests, with the pope stating that it wasn't until nearly 1,000 years after the death of Jesus Christ that the Catholic Church officially required its clergy to take vows of celibacy, CBS News reported. Twice in three months, Francis has talked about changes to the tradition of celibate priests, causing confusion in the Vatican and among Catholic reformists and conservatives alike.

On a flight back from his trip to the Middle East on July 13, Francis pointed out that the "Eastern Catholic Church" continues to allow its priests to get married and have kids, describing the ongoing requirements of celibacy in his Church as a "problem" and reportedly stating that "there are solutions and I will find them."

The interview, which also touched on the mafia and the Church's enormous sex abuse scandal, was done with the 90-year-old founder of La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari, who is popularly known to engage in long traditional conversations with public figures without taking notes or taping them, and then reconstructing them from memory.

In an official response, the Vatican said the interview was "the result of his memory as an expert journalist but not of a precise transcript of a recording nor of a revision from the part of the interested, to whom the words are attributed to." While the Vatican praised the report's ability to bring out "the sense and spirit of the conversation between the Holy Father and Scalfari," it also questioned whether the article's allegedly dubious composition is "forgetfulness or explicit recognition that a manipulation is taking place for the more naive readers?"

However, Father Papas Jani Pecoraro, an Italy-based married priest from the Greek Byzantine church, which is under Vatican authority, welcomed the pope's alleged comments. "The issue could not only change the relationship between the Catholic Church and the lay world but also with other churches," he told La Repubblica. "We have to read the times and there is no doubt that today's society raises questions that a married priest is definitely better able to cope with." Additionally, a Vatican expert, speaking to Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity, said Francis was seen as "an open pope" as a whole. "With his arrival, the progressives in the Church have regained hope," he said.

But a Vatican source called for greater caution on over-interpreting papal comments, claiming that merely pointing out that priestly celibacy is not a dogma was "no great discovery."

Meanwhile, the European Federation of Married Catholic Priests estimated more than 100,000 former Catholic priests have got married over the years -- a figure which would make up around a quarter of the number of current priests, according to AFP.