Pope Francis on Tuesday apologised after reportedly using an extremely derogatory and vulgar term about gay men to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s ban on gay priests.
A statement from the Vatican said the Pope did not mean to offend anyone and apologised to those who were “hurt by the use of a word”.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a statement acknowledging the media storm that erupted about Francis’ comments, which were delivered behind closed doors to Italian bishops on May 20.
Italian media on Monday had quoted unnamed Italian bishops in reporting that Francis jokingly used the term “faggotness” while speaking in Italian during the encounter. He had used the term in reaffirming the Vatican’s ban on allowing gay men to enter seminaries and be ordained priests, AP reported.
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There has been shock at the reported language, particularly as Pope Francis has often talked publicly of being respectful towards gay people.
Matteo Bruni said, “As he [the Pope] has stated on more than one occasion, ‘In the Church there is room for everyone, everyone! Nobody is useless or superfluous, there is room for everyone, just the way we are.’”
“The Pope never meant to offend or to use homophobic language, and apologises to everyone who felt offended [or] hurt by the use of a word,” Bruni concluded in the Vatican statement.
With the statement, Bruni carefully avoided an outright confirmation that the pope had indeed used the term, in keeping with the Vatican’s tradition of not revealing what the pope says behind closed doors. But Bruni also didn’t deny that Francis had said it.
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Pope Francis was addressing an assembly of the Italian bishops conference, which recently approved a new document outlining training for Italian seminarians. The document, which hasn’t been published pending review by the Holy See, reportedly sought to open some wiggle room in the Vatican’s absolute ban on gay priests by introducing the issue of celibacy as the primary requirement for priests, gay or straight, AP reported.
The Vatican ban was articulated in a 2005 document from the Congregation for Catholic Education, and later repeated in a subsequent document in 2016, which said the church cannot admit to seminaries or ordain men who “practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture.”