‘Who am I to judge?’ pope tells gay priests

Pope Francis answers reporters questions during a news conference aboard the papal flight on the journey back from Brazil, Monday, July 29, 2013. Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip. "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten. Francis' remarks came Monday during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip in Brazil. (AP Photo/Luca Zennaro, Pool)
Pope Francis answers reporters questions during a news conference aboard the papal flight on the journey back from Brazil, Monday, July 29, 2013. Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip. "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten. Francis' remarks came Monday during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip in Brazil. (AP Photo/Luca Zennaro, Pool)

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT - Pope Francis reached out to homosexuals Monday, saying he won’t judge priests for their sexual orientation, in an open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis asked. “We shouldn’t marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.”

Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men who had deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory in his first news conference as pope, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.

The comments did not signal any change in church policy. Catholic teaching still holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” But they indicated a shift in tone under Francis’ young papacy and an emphasis on a church that is more inclusive and merciful rather than critical and disciplinary.

“Pope Francis’ brief comment on gays reveals great mercy,” said the Rev. James Martin, an influential Catholic commentator. “That mercy, of course, comes from Jesus Christ. And we can never have enough of it. The pope’s remarks also are in line with the catechism, which teaches that gays should be treated with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity.’”

Gay leaders were buoyed by Francis’ non-judgmental approach, saying changing the tone was progress in itself, although for some, the encouragement was tempered by Francis’ talk of gay clergy’s “sins.”

“Basically, I’m overjoyed at the news,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the U.S.-based New Ways Ministry, a group promoting justice and reconciliation for homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals and the wider church community.

“For decades now, we’ve had nothing but negative comments about gay and lesbian people coming from the Vatican,” DeBernardo said in a telephone interview from Maryland.

The largest U.S. homosexual-rights group, Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the pope’s remarks “reflect a hopeful change in tone.”

Still, said Chad Griffin, the campaign’s president, as long as homosexual individuals, couples and youth alike “are told in churches big and small that their lives and their families are disordered and sinful because of how they were born - how God made them - then the church is sending a deeply harmful message.”

In Italy, where politicians are generally sensitive to Vatican policy, Italy’s first openly homosexual governor, Nichi Vendola, urged fellow politicians to learn a lesson from the pope.

“I believe that if politics had one-millionth of the capacity to … listen that the pope does, it would be better able to help people who suffer,” he said.

In the 82 minutes he spent with journalists on board the plane returning from Brazil, Francis didn’t dodge a single question, and even thanked the journalist who raised allegations contained in an Italian news magazine that one of his trusted monsignors was involved in a gay tryst.

Francis said he investigated the accusations according to canon law and found nothing to back them up.

He took journalists to task for reporting on the matter, saying the allegations concerned matters of sin, not crimes such as sexually abusing children. And when someone sins and confesses, he said, God not only forgives but forgets, Francis said.

“We don’t have the right to not forget,” he said.

Vendola, who leads the southern Puglia region, praised the pope for drawing a clear line between homosexuality and pedophilia.

“In only one blow, he carried out a very brilliant operation, separating the theme of homosexuality from that of pedophilia,” Vendola said in a chat with journalists. “We know that a part of reactionary clerical thought plays on the confusion between these two completely different categories.”

Francis also was asked about reports suggesting that a group of gay clergymen exert undue influence on Vatican policy. Italian news media reported this year that the allegations of what they call the “gay lobby” contributed to Benedict’s decision to resign.

“A lot is written about this ‘gay lobby’. I still haven’t found anyone at the Vatican who has ‘gay’ on his business card,” Francis said, chuckling. “You have to distinguish between the fact that someone is gay and the fact of being in a ‘lobby.’”

Speaking in Italian with occasional lapses in his native Spanish, Francis also addressed several other topics:

He said he is thinking of traveling to the Holy Land next year and is considering invitations from Sri Lanka and the Philippines as well.

The planned Dec. 8 canonizations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII will likely be changed - perhaps until the weekend after Easter - because road conditions in December would be dangerously icy for people from John Paul II’s native Poland traveling to the ceremony by bus.

After describing the church in feminine terms in Rio, saying it would be “sterile” without women, he said the church must develop a more profound role for women in the church, though he said “the door is closed” to ordaining women to the priesthood.

And he solved the mystery that had been circulating since he was pictured boarding the plane to Rio carrying his own black bag, an unusual break from Vatican protocol.

“The keys to the atomic bomb weren’t in it,” Francis said, jokingly. The bag, he said, contained a razor, a prayer book, his agenda and a book on St. Terese of Lisieux, to whom he is particularly devoted.

“It’s normal” to carry a bag when traveling, he said, stressing the style that separates him from other pontiffs, who until a few decades ago were carried around on platforms. “We have to get used to this being normal.”

Francis showed a human touch during his trip to Rio de Janeiro, charming the masses at World Youth Day with his decision to forgo typical Vatican security so he could to get close to his flock. Francis traveled without the bulletproof popemobile, using instead a simple Fiat or open-sided car.

“There wasn’t a single incident in all of Rio de Janeiro in all of these days and all of this spontaneity,” Francis said, responding to concerns raised after his car was swarmed by an adoring mob when it took a wrong turn.

“I could be with the people, embrace them and greet them - without an armored car and instead with the security of trusting the people,” he said.

He acknowledged that there is always the chance that a “crazy” person could get to him; John Paul II was shot in 1981. But Francis said he preferred taking a risk than submitting to the “craziness” of putting an armored wall between a shepherd and his flock.

Francis also spoke lovingly of his predecessor, saying that having him living in the Vatican “is like having a grandfather, a wise grandfather, living at home.” He said he regularly asks Benedict for advice, but dismissed suggestions that the German pontiff is exerting any influence on his papacy.

On the contrary, Francis said he has tried to encourage Benedict to participate more in public functions at the Vatican and receive guests, but that he is “a man of prudence.”

Chad Pecknold, an assistant professor of theology at Catholic University who has written on the papacy, said Francis is acting as an “agent of renewal,” reflected not only in his remarks aboard the plane, but in his stance of humility and championing of the poor and disenfranchised.

“I think the world likes a good comeback story,” Pecknold said. “There’s a sense in which the Catholic Church has been riled by scandal in the third quarter of the 20th century, and it’s time to come back from this.

“I think there’s a palpable sense that people want to see the church succeed… . I think there is this palpable sense that Pope Francis might be that agent of renewal who enables people to say, ‘It’s cool to be Catholic.’”

Francis did have harsh words for Monsignor Nunzio Scarano. The Vatican accountant has been jailed on accusations that he plotted to smuggle $26 million from Switzerland to Italy and is also accused by Italian prosecutors of using his Vatican bank account to launder money.

Francis said while “there are saints” in the Vatican bureaucracy, Scarano isn’t among them.

The Vatican bank has been a focus of Francis, and he has named a commission to look into its activities amid accusations from Italian prosecutors that it has been used as an offshore tax haven to launder money.

“Some say that it’s better to have a bank, others that it would be better to have a fund, still others say to close it,” Francis said. “I trust in the work of the people at the IOR [Institute for Works of Religion] and of the commission that’s working on it. I can’t say how it will end.” Information for this article was contributed by Nicole Winfield and Frances D’Emilio of The Associated Press, and by Elizabeth Tennety of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/30/2013

Upcoming Events