INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
"If a person is gay and seeks God, who am I to judge" Pope Francis said earlier
conversation that God had made him gay and loved him that way, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais.The Vatican declined to comment on
the report but, if confirmed, it would be a striking statement of tolerance towards homosexuality, which the Church has condemned as an
immoral disorder if it is actively practised
In an interview published on Sunday, abuse victim Juan Carlos Cruz told El Pais that Pope Francis had told him during a meeting this month:
"The fact that you are gay does not matter.Cruz said Francis had also told him: "God made you this way and loves you this way, and it
Chilean victims who were invited by the pope to Rome this month in the wake of a scandal in Chile over priestly sexual abuse and efforts by
bishops offered to resign.Since his election in 2013, the pope has dramatically shifted the language the Church has used about
homosexuality, which was once seen as a taboo subject."If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge" he said on his
first overseas trip in 2013
In 2016, he said had ministered to people with unfulfilled homosexual tendencies as well as homosexuals who were not able to remain chaste,
as the Church asks them to."When a person arrives before Jesus, Jesus certainly will not say: 'Go away because you are homosexual'," he
said.Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict, wrote in 2005 that homosexuality was "a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
