cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself." In 1970, nine German theologians, including Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), signed a letter calling for a new discussion of the law of celibacy, though refraining from making a statement as to whether the law of celibacy should in fact be changed. In 2011, hundreds of German, Austrian, and Swiss theologians (249 as of 15 February 2011) signed a letter calling for married priests, as well as for women in Church ministry. Since the Second Vatican Council During and after the Council, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has repeatedly re-affirmed the permanent value of the discipline of obligatory clerical celibacy in the Latin Church. Pope John Paul II wrote in 1992: He added that the "unchanging" essence of ordination "configures the priest to Jesus Christ the Head and Spouse of the Church." Thus, he said, "The Church, as the Spouse of Jesus Christ, wishes to be loved by the priest in the total and exclusive manner in which Jesus Christ her Head and Spouse loved her." There has never been any doubt, however, that it is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the Council Fathers explicitly recognised when they stated that "it is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood." Pope John Paul II took up this theme when he said at a public audience on 17 July 1993 that celibacy "does not belong to the essence of priesthood." He went on to speak of its aptness for, and its congruence with, the requirements of sacred orders, asserting that the discipline "enters into the logic of [priestly] consecration." Yet some commentators have argued for the possibility that married men of proven seriousness and maturity (viri probati, taking up a phrase which appears in the first-century First Epistle of Clement in a different context) might be ordained to a localized and modified form of the priesthood. The topic of viri probati was raised by some participants in discussions at Ordinary General Assembly XI of the Synod of Bishops held at the Vatican in October 2005 on the theme of the Eucharist, but it was rejected as a solution for the insufficiency of priests. Pope Francis Pope Francis shared his views on celibacy, and the possibility of church discussion on the topic, when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, recorded in the book On Heaven and Earth,