The Scottish Catholic leader, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has said he would be happy for priests to be able to marry. Many priests struggle to cope with celibacy and should be able to marry and have a family, he added, in advance of a trip to Rome where he will help elect the next pope.

O'Brien told the BBC: "I'd be very happy if others had the opportunity of considering whether or not they could or should be married. It's a free world and I realise many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family."

O'Brien, 74, stood down from some frontline duties in the Roman Catholic church in Scotland last year due to his age.

He quit the position of Bishops' Conference of Scotland, the key decision-making body in the church.

He said marriage was not considered when he was studying for the priesthood but added he would be happy to see it introduced.

Cardinal O'Brien added:"I would like others to have the choice. In my time there was no choice, you didn't really consider it too much. It was part of being a priest when I was a young boy, priests didn't get married and that was it.

"When you were a student for the priesthood, well it was part of the package, as it were, that you were celibate, that you didn't get married and you didn't really consider it all that much, you just took your vows of celibacy the way someone else would naturally take their vows of marriage."

O'Brien welcomed Pope Benedict when he visited Scotland in 2010.

He has been an outspoken opponent of the Scottish government's plans to legalise same-sex marriage and was named "bigot of the year" by the gay rights charity Stonewall last November. It said he was given the title because he went "well beyond what any normal person would call a decent level of public discourse" in the debate.

The Catholic church criticised the charity's award, saying it revealed "the depth of their intolerance" and a willingness to demean people who do not share their views.