VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI has issued a rare and explicit denunciation of priests who have questioned church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying they were being selfish in disobeying his authority.

Benedict made the criticism in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises made when they were ordained.

In 2006, a group of Austrian priests launched the Pfaffer Initiative, a call to disobedience aimed at abolishing priestly celibacy and opening up the clergy to women to relieve the shortages of priests.

Benedict said the dissidents claim to be motivated by concern for the church. But he suggested that really they were just making "a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with (their) own preferences and ideas."