'God Made You This Way': Pope Francis to a Gay Man

LGBT
LGBT (photo: Pixabay)
By Mei ManuelMay 22nd, 2018

On Sunday, a Spanish newspaper reported that a Chilean man who had suffered clerical sexual abuse has said Pope Francis spoke to him in a private conversation and told him that God had made him gay and loved him that way.

The interview was published in 'El Pais' and featured the statement of abuse victim Juan Carlos Cruz, one of the three Chilean victims invited by the pope to the Vatican this month in the wake of the scandal in Chile regarding priestly sexual abuse and the hushup by the Church hierarchy. Last week, the bishops of the Chilean Church had offered to resign after meeting with the Pope about the crisis.

Cruz said that the Pope said to him during his meeting "The fact that you are gay does not matter."

He further added the Pope said "God made you this way and loves you this way, and it doesn't matter to me. The pope loves you this way, you must be happy the way you are."

The Vatican had declined to comment on the report, but if it was confirmed, it would reflect a different stance to the Church's position on homosexuality, which it has condemned as an immoral disorder if it is actively practiced by an individual.

However, since he took office in 2013, Pope Francis has shifted his stance on how the Church should see homosexuality. In his first overseas trip that same year, he said "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"

In 2016, he had ministered to peopel 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," the pope said in the ceremony.

In contrast to his stance, Pope Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict, had a different view over homosexuality and wrote in 2005 that it was "a strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil."

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