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The Pope’s views on homosexuality and women should change, says former Irish President Mary McAleese.
Focusing on homosexuality, she says she cannot go to the World Meeting of Families when the Pope visits Ireland in August, as it does not include LGBTI people.
In her view, the Church’s “evil” teaching on homosexuality gave rise to homophobia, ruining people’s lives and causing them “to live in dark shadows.”
“[The] World Meeting of Families, here was he [the Pope] saying it was for all God’s family no matter what you believe, no matter what your set of circumstances, whether you’re LGBTI, whether you’re divorced and remarried … you’re welcome.
“And if you’re like us, a family with two heterosexual children and one homosexual son who’s married to his husband, you’re in, you’re members of God’s family, come along.”
However, the Meeting of World Families has moved from being a potentially inclusive event to an exclusive one, where her family no longer felt welcome, she says.
“Suddenly we were in the hands of a Church that is exclusive, that holds on to that book of laws and hits you over the head with it, uses it to exclude some and only include the chosen and I lost faith in it then …”
McAleese says she was “heartbroken for the children that I have, that can’t go now, who feel they are not wanted because we feel not wanted … I think that’s a pity because it could have been and still could be so great if they had got their message right.”
Speaking of women and the church, McAleese commented the current Pope is no different from any of his predecessors when it comes to gender equality within the church.
“He’s a disappointment … he’s made a few more appointments, but … you know they increased visibility, not voice.”
When it comes to the “issue of women in the Church,” this is where “the curial, magisterial Church is so far behind the curve it is embarrassing” and arguments against the ordination of women as priests were “ultimately untenable,” McAleese says.
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