Praise for Francis's remarks on gays

Pope Francis smiles before departing for Rome after concluding a week-long trip to Brazil, at the air base in Rio de Janeiro. Source: AFP

POPE Francis's remarks that he would not "judge" homosexuals have been praised by celebrities and the faithful alike as "largely symbolic,"' but a big step in the right direction.

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip in Brazil.

The comments set off a firestorm on social media, tweets mentioning the word Pope spiked from 20,000 to well over 100,000 following news of the comments which seem at odds with statements from the previous pontiff.

Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. But Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.

While progressive Catholic and gay rights groups said the Church still has a long way to go.

Prominent gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign said, while his "words do not reflect a shift in Church policy, they represent a significant change in tone."

"The widespread positive response his words have received around the world reveals that Catholics everywhere are thirsty for change," HRC's president Chad Griffin said.

This graph shows the number of tweets that mentioned the word Pope in the hours after Pope Francis said he wouldn't judge gay people.

CELEBS WEIGH IN

Likewise, a progressive US Catholic group, Catholics United, which has been very critical of Church leadership, said Francis' comments "speak to what every young person knows: God loves gay people, and so should the Catholic Church.

"Pope Francis' call for the acceptance of gay priests is a direct repudiation of the backward beliefs of many ultra-conservative ideologues in the Church," the group's leader James Salt said in a statement.

Pope Francis, in some of the most conciliatory words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged; as he upholds ban on women priests. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

"This statement on gay people, while largely symbolic, is a big step in the right way."

But both groups said the Church still has a long way to go.

"As long as millions of LGBT Catholic individuals, couples and youth alike are told in churches big and small that their lives and their families are disordered and sinful because of how they are born-how God made them-then the Church is sending a deeply harmful message," HRC's Griffin said.

Celebrities were also quick to react with Bette Midler questioning if the comments about gay Catholic priests represent real change.

Cardinals, bishops and priests take photos as they wait for the arrival of Pope Francis and the start of the World Youth Day closing Mass in Rio.

 Film maker Michael Moore, who was raised Catholic, welcomed the words as reflecting the true teachings of the church.

Irish singer Brian McFadden said Pope Francis's words were a start for a faith that needs to do more to move with the times.

Even 'God', the popular Twitter parody account with the handle @TheTweetOfGod, thought it was about time the Catholic Church reached out to the gay community.

Other reactions welcomed Francis's modern approach to the issue.

Pope Francis waves to crowds in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the city hosts World Youth Day.

FRANCIS SPEAKS ABOUT 'GAY SEX RING'

In the wide-ranging news conference, the Pope spoke not only of not judging gay clergy but also commented on allegations that that one of his trusted monsignors was involved in a scandalous gay tryst

He was funny and candid and even thanked the journalist who raised allegations reported by an Italian newsmagazine.

Francis said he investigated and found nothing to back up the allegations.

Pope Francis poses for a picture with military police outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Rio de Janeiro.

Francis was asked about Italian media reports suggesting that a group within the church tried to blackmail fellow church officials with evidence of their homosexual activities. Italian media reported this year that the allegations contributed to Benedict's decision to resign.

Stressing that Catholic social teaching that calls for homosexuals to be treated with dignity and not marginalised, Francis said it was something else entirely to conspire to use private information for blackmail or to exert pressure.

Francis was responding to reports that a trusted aide was involved in an alleged gay tryst a decade ago. He said he investigated the allegations according to canon law and found nothing to back them up. But he took journalists to task for reporting on the matter, saying the allegations concerned matters of sin, not crimes like sexually abusing children.

And when someone sins and confesses, he said, God not only forgives but forgets.

"We don't have the right to not forget," he said.

POPE MORE OPEN THAN PREDECESSORS

The directness of his comments suggested that he wanted to put the matter of the monsignor behind him as he sets about overhauling the Vatican bank and reforming the Holy See bureaucracy.

Speaking in Italian with occasional lapses in his native Spanish, Francis dropped a few nuggets of other news:

- He said he was thinking of travelling to the Holy Land next year and is considering invitations from Sri Lanka and the Philippines as well.

- The planned December 8 canonisations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII will likely be postponed - perhaps until the weekend after Easter - because road conditions in December would be dangerously icy for Poles travelling to the ceremony by bus.

- And he solved the mystery that has been circulating ever since he was pictured boarding the plane to Rio carrying his own black bag, an unusual break from Vatican protocol.

"The keys to the atomic bomb weren't in it," Francis quipped. Rather, he said, the bag merely contained a razor, his breviary prayer book, his agenda and a book on St Terese of Lisieux, to whom he is particularly devoted.

"It's normal" to carry a bag when travelling, he said. "We have to get use to this being normal, this normalcy of life," for a pope, he added.

Francis certainly showed a human, normal touch during his trip to Rio, charming the masses at World Youth Day with his decision to forgo typical Vatican security so he could to get close to his flock. Francis travelled without the bulletproof Popemobile, using instead a simple Fiat or open-sided car.

"There wasn't a single incident in all of Rio de Janeiro in all of these days and all of this spontaneity," Francis said, responding to concerns raised after his car was swarmed by an adoring mob when it took a wrong turn and got stuck in traffic.

"I could be with the people, embrace them and greet them - without an armoured car and instead with the security of trusting the people," he said.

He acknowledged that there is always the chance that a "crazy" person could get to him. But he said he preferred taking that risk than submitting to the "craziness" of putting an armoured wall between a shepherd and his flock.

Francis' news conference was remarkable and unprecedented: Pope John Paul II used to have on-board press conferences, but he would move about the cabin, chatting with individual reporters so it was sometimes hit-or-miss to hear what he said and there were often time limits. After Benedict's maiden foreign voyage, the Vatican insisted that reporters submit questions in advance so the theologian pope could choose the three or four he wanted to answer and prepare his answers.

For Francis, however, no question was off the table, no small thing given that he is known to distrust the mainstream media and had told journalists en route to Rio that he greatly disliked giving news conferences because he found them "tiresome".

Francis spoke lovingly of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, saying that having him living in the Vatican "is like having a grandfather, a wise grandfather, living at home." He said he regularly asks Benedict for advice, but dismissed suggestions that the German pontiff was exerting any influence on his papacy.

On the contrary, Francis said he had tried to encourage Benedict to participate more in public functions at the Vatican and receive guests, but that he was "a man of prudence".

In one of his most important speeches delivered in Rio, Francis described the church in feminine terms, saying it would be "sterile" without women. Asked what role he foresaw, he said the church must develop a more profound role for women in the church, though he said "the door is closed" to ordaining women to the priesthood.

He was less charitable with the Vatican accountant, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who has been jailed on accusations he plotted to smuggle 20 million euros ($29 million) from Switzerland to Italy and is also accused by Italian prosecutors of using his Vatican bank account to launder money.

Francis said while "there are saints" in the Vatican bureaucracy, Scarano wasn't among them.

The Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has been a focus of Francis' reform efforts, and he has named a commission of inquiry to look into its activities amid accusations from Italian prosecutors that it has been used as an offshore tax haven to launder money.

Asked if closing the bank was a possibility, Francis said: "I don't know how this story will end."

"But the characteristics of the IOR - whether it's a bank, an aid fund or whatever it is - are transparency and honesty."
 

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