Paraguay’s political opposition whipped out the heavy artillery on Tuesday, taking President Fernando Lugo to task for having fathered a child while he still served as a Roman Catholic bishop.

A 57-year-old leftist, Lugo admitted on Monday he is the father of a toddler, confirming his relationship with a woman who is now 26 years old.

Lugo was known as the “bishop of the poor” during the 10 years he labored in a forlorn rural area of landlocked Paraguay. The president campaigned on pledges to ease crushing poverty in the South American nation, but opposition lawmaker Carlos Maria Soler said: “I hope the poverty vows the bishop took do not go the way of his chastity vows, because then we’d really be in trouble.”

But while his political rivals slammed him in Congress, analysts said Lugo’s roughly 70 percent approval ratings are unlikely to sink in response to the revelation. And one of his siblings, Pompeyo Lugo, defended the president’s behavior to Argentine radio station Continental.

“This is the most important love story to happen in Paraguay in this century and the last one,” Pompeyo Lugo said. “Love is more important than the obligation to be celibate, which is a commitment but it also punishes human nature.”

A paternity suit filed by lawyers for the child’s mother - who later said she had not authorized the suit - said Lugo met and seduced her when she was 16 years old and then continued a relationship with her. The legal age of sexual consent in Paraguay is 17.

Lugo shed his cassock in late 2006 to launch his political career despite opposition from the Catholic Church. After he won Paraguay’s presidential vote in April of last year, the Vatican granted him an unprecedented waiver to allow him to hold the country’s top political post.

The Paraguayan Episcopal Conference made a broad plea to society on Tuesday: ”We ask all Catholics and people of good will to pray for us so that we may stay faithful to our priestly and episcopal mission.”

President Lugo acted quickly to legally recognize his paternity. His son will turn 2 years old in May.

Photo of Lugo taken in Montevideo, Uruguay, on March 27, 2009. REUTERS/ Pablo La Rosa.

Paraguay’s president, Fernando Lugo, admitted he fathered a child with a woman he had a relationship with when he was still known as the ”bishop of the poor” who served an impoverished rural area as a Roman Catholic bishop.

The Catholic Church frowned on his getting into politics, but eventually the Vatican granted him an unprecedented dispensation to serve as president of the South American country without breaking Church rules.  Would the pope have been moved to such leniency if he had known Lugo broke his vows?

Picture of President Fernando Lugo taken April 13, 2009, REUTERS/Rafael Urzua; picture of Viviana Carrillo, the woman he fathered a child with, taken April 7, 2009, REUTERS/Courtesy Ultima Hora.

Nearly two weeks after ordained bishop Fernando Lugo was elected the next president of Paraguay, the Roman Catholic Church is still trying to figure out what do about him. The Vatican doesn’t want to have a bishop donning the presidential sash — mixing the priesthood with politics — but it also believes that once a bishop always a bishop, since ordination is a lifelong sacarament. The Vatican is dropping signals that it wants to find a non-controversial solution, and pundits doubt it will return the “bishop of the poor” to a lay state.

But there is no modern precedent to guide the Holy See. One Italian media outlet turned back to Talleyrand, the French bishop-turned foreign minister under Napoleon, even though the case bears no resemblance to modern Paraguay. The Vatican already suspended Lugo from his priestly duties after his entry into politics, and the Vatican envoy to Paraguay Orlando Antonini (pictured smiling with Lugo above) was quoted by Vatican Radio saying the next move was up to the pope.

Antonini added, perhaps tellingly, that Lugo wanted to remain within the Church, even though the Paraguayan leader has been quoted saying he was willing to be reduced to the lay state (here’s the Vatican Radio story in Italian). He abandoned his duties as a bishop three years ago, saying he felt powerless to help Paraguay’s poor.

While the Vatican is acting cautiously, other Christians have expressed their delight in Lugo’s landmark election to a country where corruption and poverty are endemic. The World Council of Churches, which groups the main non-Catholic Christian churches, praised Lugo’s committment to the poorest in line with “the rich tradition of a Latin American Christianity which has struggled to follow Jesus amidst a reality marked by inequality and lack of justice.”

The Council’s Secretary General Samuel Kobia said he was praying for Lugo’s “administration to bring more justice and reconciliation to the Paraguayan people,” as well as the possibility of “building a society that reduces the gap between the rich and the poor and addresses corruption”. Here is the full text in Spanish.

Fernando Lugo shed his cassock to win Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday, ending 61 years of one-party rule in the South American country. Lugo stepped down as bishop of one of Paraguay’s neediest areas three years ago, saying he felt powerless to help the poor. A year later, he left the priesthood to launch his political career.

The Vatican responded by suspending him, but he remains a bishop under canon law because the Catholic Church views ordination as a lifelong sacrament.

Paraguay’s bishops said they recognise the mild-mannered, sandal-wearing Lugo as the new president, adding this may be the first country where a Catholic bishop has been elected leader.

It’s unclear how this might affect diplomatic relations between Paraguay and the Vatican.

“I understand this is the first time this happens and so the Pope will have to analyse this. I don’t know what measure he’ll take,” Monsignor Ignacio Gogorza, the head of Paraguay’s bishops’ conference, told local radio.

Local media reported that Lugo, 56, had expressed an interest in serving as bishop again, once his presidential term ends in 2013.

“For that to happen, he’d have to pass through a period of penitence and reflection, if the Church were to accept that. If not, he’d be a suspended bishop for life,” Gogorza said.

Bishop Adalberto Martinez, secretary-general of the bishops’ conference, said Paraguay’s bishops will continue to consider Lugo a friend after collaborating with him for 12 years.

“This is such a special and historic situation, that I think it deserves special attention from the Holy See,” Martinez was quoted as saying in Paraguayan daily La Nacion.

The Paraguayan people welcomed Lugo’s entry in politics since the Catholic Church is one of the most respected institutions in a country where corruption and nepotism abounds.

Thousands of Paraguayans flocked to a central square in Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion, to celebrate Lugo’s victory on Sunday night.

Among them was Delfina Ramirez, a Catholic nun.

“This triumph is incredible, we had been waiting for it for a long time,” Ramirez said. When asked what she thought of the Vatican’s opinion, she forcefully gestured with her hands as if to say: “Who cares?”