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‘Who am I to judge gay people?’ – Pope Francis
‘If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?’ Pope Francis says.
Pope Francis has returned from his first overseas trip since being elected in March.
As he returned from his first overseas trip since being elected Pope, Pope Francis said it was not for him to judge if a person was homosexual.
Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.
"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" he asked.
The Pope was asked about long-standing claims that there is a powerful "gay lobby" within the Vatican.
In June, he himself acknowledged that such a lobby existed in the Curia, the Vatican's secretive administration.
The Pope said he wanted a greater role for women in the Church, but insisted they could not be priests.
He arrived back in Rome on Monday after a week-long tour of Brazil - his first trip abroad as pontiff - which climaxed with a huge gathering on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach for a world Catholic youth festival.
He also said gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten: "The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well,"
"The problem is not having this orientation," he said. "We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."
On the role of women in the Church, he said: "We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more.
"But with regards to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says no... that door is closed."
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Wise words from a Humble Man
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The Holy Gospel quotes Christ as saying: Knock and the door will open to you. The Pope tells women: knock and the church will keep the door closed for you. Nice! Our Lord Jesus Christ was a real democrat but the church uses a pushback system with women. Could it be that the church is scared of intelligent women who can be more intellectual than male priests? Just asking.
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The Pope keeps repeating that he wants to wake up consciences. Is he doing this by keeping closed the door to women's ordination? Does he want to wake up the conscience of men only and keeping asleep women's conscience? Is the Pope not being unfair and discriminatory to women while crying out for justice? Is the Pope not being contradictory?
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Thank you Mr Pope for confirming that your church closes the door to women. And the intolerance of stating that once the church has spoken, there is no going back, is shockingly insensitive. If you want to be more credible about other issues, first solve the gender discrimination issue in your church. I suppose that some naive and gullible women cheered and clapped when their leader told them "the door is closed for you". Isn't this something to get excited about, jump and clap?! If you close the door to me and I keep waiting submissively behind your door, then I do not deserve any better!
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Who are you to judge? You are the leader of the Catholic Church. If you are not to judge, do you condone same sex marriages? According to the Catholic Church you are not allowed to marry a same sex pardner.
