According to Italian news reports, one of the ideologies he specified was a gay culture, referring to it, however, by using the same derogatory slang term in Italian that he reportedly used in a closed-door meeting with members of the Italian bishops' conference in May when describing some seminaries as being marked by a gay culture. Continue reading

Just days after the Vatican issued an apology for the pontiff's use of a slur in reference to seminarians who identify as gay, Francis reportedly responded to an email from a young gay man, telling him to "go ahead" with his vocation.

The young man apparently wrote to the Pope after seeing reports that Francis allegedly used a homophobic slur in a closed-door discussion with the Italian bishops' conference.

He reportedly asked the bishop to exercise caution in admitting gay men to seminaries.

The Vatican subsequently published and apology for the reported slur.

Prospective seminarian

The prospective seminarian, 22-year old Lorenzo Michele Noè Caruso, is reported to have written a lengthy email to Francis, expressing his bitterness at being turned away from the seminary.

He was disappointed by the pope's remark, he wrote.

He also told Francis that he and many others like him "live on the margins of the Church, often forced to hide because they are excluded from the community or forced to pay the high price of rejection for their sincerity".

He also said he hopes the Synod on Synodality, which has discussed LGBTQ+ Catholics' inclusion, will result in "a turning point to walk together under the light of Christ, where no one is rejected and everyone is an expression of God's plan for our Church".

Pope's handwritten response

Francis handwrote his reply to Caruso. His letter was scanned and attached to his email response to Caruso's message.

In the letter, Francis reportedly thanked Caruso for reaching out, saying he was struck by the phrase "toxic and elective clericalism".

"It's true! You know that clericalism is a plague? It's an ugly ‘worldliness'" he said.

Francis reiterated his position that "Jesus calls everyone, everyone", telling Caruso "go forward with your vocation. I pray for you, please do it for me (I need it)".

All welcome

The Vatican has also said Francis has reiterated his long-standing view that "in the Church there is space for everyone, for everyone! No one is useless, no one is superfluous, there is space for all. Just as we are, everyone".

Source

• America Magazine
• CruxNow
• CNA

It's forged in part by the Vatican's own official communications channels, but even more so by outside commentators and media platforms heavily invested in selling a given pope's story to the world.

Throughout his papacy, John Paul II enjoyed a wide network of friendly commentators and analysts, forever prepared to interpret the pope in the best possible light.

Benedict XVI had his own support system, though smaller and quieter by comparison.

The fact that Francis has such a coterie - not the same people, obviously, but doing much the same thing - has been made abundantly clear in the last 24 hours or so.

It is clear vis-à-vis news reports that he used a crude slang term in referring to homosexuals in a May 20 session with Italian bishops.

Ironically, it's possible that in this case, the pope's mediatic Praetorian Guard actually may be misrepresenting the pontiff in order to save him, but more on that in a moment.

Private meeting

To set the scene, on May 20 Pope Francis was in the Vatican's synod hall in order to address the spring plenary assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference (known by the acronym CEI).

There were roughly 230 bishops in the room, along with other clergy and supporting staff, meaning this wasn't just a casual chat among a handful of friends.

Technically, Francis's remarks to CEI are considered private, meaning the Vatican doesn't release an official transcript.

Yet with that many people in the room - some of whom, by the way, have awfully cosy relationships with reporters - it's generally foreordained that whatever the pope says will get out.

Certainly, the media-savvy Francis would have understood that whatever he said in that space was unlikely to stay there.

The gossips say

One of the topics that arose at the meting was the question of the admission of homosexual men to Catholic seminaries. Soon afterwards, rumors began to circulate.

It was said that Francis had used an off-colour term in the context of the discussion, saying there's already too much frociaggine in seminaries, which translates roughly to "faggotry."

The root term in Italian is frocio, the most widely used pejorative term in Italian for a gay man, the etymology of which has been lost in time.

(One theory traces it back to the 1527 sack of Rome, when feroci, or "ferocious", invading troops supposedly raped men and women indistinctly, but nobody really knows.)

The suffix -aggine denotes a quality or characteristic; for instance, Italians take the word stupido (which means what you think) and turn it into stupidaggini to convey acts of stupidity, i.e., "nonsense."

A matter of language

The rumour that Francis used the word was first made public by the Italian blog Dagospia, which is more or less the country's equivalent of the Drudge Report,

It was then picked up by mainstream media, first in Italy and then around the world.

In presenting the news, a striking share of media outlets have done so in ways seemingly intended to take the pope off the hook.

They note high up in their coverage that Italian is not his mother tongue and suggest he may not have understood that the term in question is offensive.

One prominent Italian newspaper, for example, pointed out that growing up in Argentina, the future pope spoke the Piedmont dialect rather than today's standard Italian.

It quoted unnamed bishops present at the time who said "it was obvious Francis was not aware of how much in our language the word is weighty and offensive."

Many media outlets also suggested the pope must not have known what he was saying, given his reputation as the pope of "Who am I to judge?"

Francis has built a reputation for being LGBTQ+-friendly, so the coverage holds, meaning that he must have used the term almost accidentally, without intending to shock or offend.

What should be made of these interpretations? Read more

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Is this the same pope who, early in his pontificate, when asked about a gay clergyman who keeps his vows, asked rhetorically, "Who am I to judge?"

Yes, it is.

Part of the confusion about the decision to permit blessings of gay people who are in a relationship stems from the Vatican's own press coverage of the document Fiducia Supplicans when it was promulgated last December.

Vatican News produced the headline: "Doctrinal declaration opens the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations." Couples, not individuals.

When reading the English translation of the document, it clearly states, at Paragraph 11:

… it is necessary that what is blessed corresponds with God's designs written in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.

For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.

But the very next paragraph sets the stage for the pastoral application of the doctrinal principle, stating, "One must also avoid the risk of reducing the meaning of blessings to this point of view alone. …

"Indeed, there is the danger that a pastoral gesture that is so beloved and widespread will be subjected to too many moral prerequisites, which, under the claim of control, could overshadow the unconditional power of God's love that forms the basis for the gesture of blessing."

This was the heart of the document: God's unconditional love "forms the basis for the gesture of blessing."

The pope was indicating that a pastor, charged with helping all persons develop and deepen their relationship with God, can impart a blessing on persons whose situation is, in the eyes of the church, irregular.

"The shift Francis intends is, at once, less exact and more profound than a doctrinal shift," I wrote at the time. "What Francis has been trying to achieve for many years is to relocate the place of doctrine within the magisterium of the church, specifically to insist that doctrine serve the good of souls, not the other way round."

The issue of gay seminarians is entirely different from that of blessing gay unions: No doctrinal issues are involved.

So long as a seminarian is celibate, and has maturely integrated his celibacy into his life, it should not matter if he is straight or gay.

We do not have a transcript of what the pope said to the Italian bishops and, especially, what question prompted him to say what he did.

There have been instances of seminaries with a gay subculture that was destructive of the formation the seminary existed to impart.

The fact that the pope may have used a vulgar Italian word, frociaggine — translated as "queerness" in most media accounts but I suspect "campiness" is closer to what was meant — when discussing the subject suggests he might have had in mind precisely such a situation.

The pope has now apologised for using the term.

The idea that the pope has suddenly revealed his hidden bigotry towards gay persons, which seems to be the consensus on social media, is ridiculous.

Nothing about this man or his papacy suggests he is bigoted towards anyone.

Whence, then, this ambivalence in the pope's statements?

How did he go from "Who am I to judge?" to this?

It has to do with the inherent conflict of his position as pope.

He is the universal pastor of the church and he is the defender of Christian doctrine.

He wants to help people grow closer to God, and knows that accompanying them, not judging them, is the best way to achieve that. He also believes what the church teaches.

It is this last point that the activists on both sides forget. Continue reading

• Michael Sean Winters is the author of Left At the Altar: How Democrats Lost The Catholics And How Catholics Can Save The Democrats (Basic Books, 2008).

He "never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologises to those who felt offended" says Holy See press office chief Matteo Bruni.

The remarks are at odds with the pope's track record to date.

He has made outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy and has long insisted there was "room for everyone" in the Catholic Church.

Not quite closed

Bruni said the pope's comments were delivered behind closed doors at a meeting with Italian bishops on May 20.

Italian media on Monday claimed unnamed Italian bishops said Pope Francis jokingly used the Italian term "faggotness" during the meeting.

They said he used the term when reaffirming the Vatican's ban on allowing gay men to enter seminaries or be ordained priests.

But Brunei says Francis "never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term that was reported by others".

LGBTQ+ advocates offended

Advocates for greater inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ+ Catholics are upset.

The offensive slur is bad enough.

But "what is damaging is the institutional church's insistence on ‘banning' gay men from the priesthood as if we all do not know (and minister alongside) many gifted, celibate, gay priests".

So said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of the religious studies department at Manhattan College.

She added "The LGBTQ community seems to be a constant target of offhand, off the cuff ‘mistakes' from people in the Vatican, including the pope, who should know better".

Comments taken out of context

Francis remarks were taken out of context says the vice president of the Italian Bishops' Conference.

He is accusing the leaker of using the comments to divide.

"The pope is not homophobic and never was" said Bishop Francesco Savino of the southern Italian Diocese of Cassano all'Jonio.

He denied that, in his conversation with the Italian bishops on May 20, Pope Francis gave a categorical "no" to the entry of homosexuals to the seminary.

"There is not an a priori 'no' to them" he said.

"His true concern is the serenity of all. The pope wanted to say that the candidates [for the priesthood and entry to the seminary], whether homosexual or heterosexual, should be capable of living well their promises with respect to obedience, poverty and chastity; to love with a full heart and empty hands."

Source

• Vatican News
• AP News
• America