A former Anglican pastor who is married with two children has just become Spain’s first married priest after being ordained by the Roman Catholic Church.

Evans David Gliwitzki, a 64-year-old former Anglican pastor, was ordained by the Bishop of Tenerife in the small town of La Laguna on the Canary Island. The ceremony on Saturday was held in the Church of Notre-Dame de la Concepcion and was also attended by his wife, two grown-up daughters, son-in-law and granddaughter.

The promotion of the bishop to pastor comes despite Catholicism’s strong dogmatic tradition which insists that priest be celibate.

The spokesman to the Zimbabwe-born Gliwitzki, Bishop Felipe Fernandez, confirmed to hundreds of well-wishers from Britain and the US outside the Church that Friar Evans “would continue being married to his wife, Patricia”.

Bishop Fernandez denied, however, that Gliwitzki’s promotion to priesthood was a sign a radical new shift in church policy.

He said that the ordination of Friar Evans was “a very singular exception” and denied any possibility that the move indicated “the abolition of the rule of celibacy for Catholic priests.”

The episcopal spokesman said that the ordination of the former Church of England minister was a “gesture of respect to the Anglican Church, which permits married priests” and said that the move was the result of ecumenical meetings in the Vatican between Anglicans and Catholics. The meetings were co-ordinated by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger prior to his election as pope and also attended by Friar Evans.

Friar Evans’ case for priesthood had received the approval of Pope John Paul II prior to his death, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the spokesman.

Gliwitzki’s succession to priesthood is the end of a process beginning more than two years ago, which involved his being ordained as a deacon last June.

The new priest will lead his first Mass today in the parish of Our Lady of Carmen, in La Laguna.