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Pope Francis \u201cnever intended to offend\u201d by using a slang term for homosexuals, said Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni. Others commented: Michael Day on the INews website in the UK and Robert Mickens, editor-in- chief of the progressive Catholic La Croix International website<\/p><\/div>\n
Pope Francis made remarks to the Plenary Assembly of the Italian episcopate on May 20 at a private, closed-door gathering which, nevertheless, found their way into the press via an anonymous attendee at the meeting.<\/p>\n
When asked specifically by two different Italian bishops whether they should admit homosexual men to study for the priesthood, Pope Francis reportedly counseled against it, surprising many who have perceived \u2014 and portrayed \u2014 Francis, 87, Pope for more than 11 years now, as a powerful proponent of the \u201cliberalization\u201d of the attitude toward homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
But what really caused a stir was that Francis, in giving this counsel, said there is already \u201ctoo much faggotry\u201d (\u201cfrociaggine<\/i>\u201d) in Catholic seminaries.<\/p>\n
It was the use of this word, \u201cfrociaggine,\u201d which sparked a massive outcry, as the secular media slammed Francis for being so callous as to use a derogatory Italian slang term used by \u201chomophobics.\u201d<\/p>\n
And because Francis chose to use this word, some have begun to question, even to revise, their entire interpretation of his papacy.<\/p>\n
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\u201cPope Francis\u2019s homophobic slur shows us once again that he is no saint,\u201d was the title of one article by Michael Day<\/b> on the INews website in the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs the current pontiff Francis living up to claims \u2014 or perhaps hopes \u2014 that his reign would usher in an era of less hostility to gays?\u201d Day asked. \u201cThe answer to this is probably \u2018no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Day continued: \u201cFamously in 2013, the Argentinian pontiff sounded a more tolerant note on sexuality after he replaced the ultra-conservative Pope Ratzinger.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrancis declared: \u2018If they [gay priests] accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn\u2019t be marginalised. The tendency [same-sex attraction] is not the problem\u2026 they\u2019re our brothers.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut reacting to the Pope\u2019s latest comments, veteran Vatican watcher Robert Mickens<\/b> (right), editor-in-chief of the progressive Catholic La Croix International website, says: \u2018This shows that despite the noises about greater inclusiveness in recent years, nothing has really changed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Day went on: \u201cThe offensive word Francis used \u2013 \u2018frociaggine\u2019 \u2013 is the kind of crude term (based on the slur \u2018frocio\u2019 or \u2018faggot\u2019), typical of the local Roman slang.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral bishops present at the meeting have suggested that the Pope, who grew up in an Italianspeaking household, didn\u2019t understand its offensiveness. So too, have some of the unduly deferential correspondents who exist with them in the Vatican bubble.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome others suggest it is simply more evidence of 87-year-old Francis getting ever more irascible in his old age…<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the earlier noises Francis made about the Church being more welcoming of the LGBT community, he remains at heart a conservative Catholic bishop, who grew up in the macho culture of Argentina.\u201d<\/p>\n
Francis surprises the \u201cFrancis watchers\u201d<\/b><\/h4>\n
After the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Fern\u00e1ndez<\/strong>, released last December\u2019s widely-discussed (and widely-criticized) Fiducia Supplicans, on the blessing of same-sex \u2014 and other \u201cirregular\u201d \u2014 couples, many assumed that it was a step in the direction of \u201cnormalizing\u201d homosexuality in the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n So it came as something of a surprise that Pope Francis answered the two Italian bishops\u2019 question about admitting homosexual men to the seminary in the negative, saying, \u201cIt is better not to ordain someone with these tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Francis said that it is better to \u201close a vocation\u201d than to have to deal with the \u201cproblems\u201d often caused by homosexuality in the seminary and priesthood.<\/p>\n And he added this advice to the bishops: \u201cDon\u2019t talk to reporters about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Cardinal Fernandez speaking at the Vatican press conference presentation of Fiducia Supplicans and, right, Matteo Bruni, Director of the Holy See Press Office<\/p><\/div>\n On May 28, eight days after the Pope made his private remarks to the bishops, the Vatican Press office finally responded to the developing controversy with an apology from the Pope to anyone who might have been offended.<\/p>\n The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni<\/strong>, told reporters Pope Francis was \u201caware\u201d of the articles about his closed-door conversation with the Italian Bishops, and affirmed that the Pope apologized for any offense.<\/p>\n \u201cAs he has stated on many occasions,\u201d said Bruni, \u201c\u2018There is room for everyone in the Church, for everyone! No one is useless; no one is superfluous; there is room for everyone. Just as we are, everyone.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThe Pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologizes to those who felt offended by the use of a term, as reported by others.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the conservative Italian Catholic online journal Stilum Curiae<\/i> ran an article by Mario Andinolfi<\/b>, an outspoken traditional Catholic journalist, politician and blogger, in which Andinolfi went so far as to praise Francis for his frankness \u2014 even if it was a \u201ccareless\u201d frankness \u2014 with the Italian bishops, in speaking negatively about the admission of homosexuals to the seminary.<\/p>\n Referring to one of the many Italian media figures who have painted the Francis papacy as a progressive \u201cengine for change\u201d in the Church, Andinolfi asked: \u201cWho knows what he will say about Francis today, not understanding that the Catholic Church is the only source of light in an Italy darkened by their ferocious conformism, which now pretends to be scandalized by a frank word used by the Pope in a closed-door meeting to explain that as Catholics we embrace everyone, but we do not resign ourselves to the spread of the sin that we call by its name.\u201d<\/p>\n And Andinolfi concluded: \u201cLong live the Pope\u2019s inappropriate words, long live the carelessness of Francis.\u201d<\/p>\n By Mario Andinolfi<\/strong><\/p>\n Mario Andinolfi, an outspoken traditional Catholic journalist, politician and blogger.<\/p><\/div>\n I spent 10 years in the television studios [of Italy] being described as the \u201cRatzingerian\u201d homophobic Catholic.<\/p>\n Now marginalized in the progressive Church of Francis, I don\u2019t know how many times (I have been) attacked with very negative epithets, waving the Pope\u2019s \u201cWho am I to judge?\u201d remark of July 2013 in my face.<\/p>\n In all those television debates, I asked everyone to listen to the entire minute of the papal declaration, not to distort it by hearing only the 10-second snippet used in order to exploit it.<\/p>\n Even back then, the Pope was highlighting his opposition to the \u201cgay lobby\u201d present in the Vatican.<\/p>\n And obviously in 2016 he reiterated the \u201cno\u201d already expressed by Ratzinger on the ordination of priests \u201cwith homosexual tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n So is Pope Francis<\/b> \u201chomophobic\u201d?<\/p>\n Massimo Gramellini<\/b> on the front page of [the Italian daily] Corriere della Sera today rakes Pope Francis over the coals, comparing him to a crude \u201cwrestler,\u201d humiliating him by asking that Bombolo [an Italian comedian who died in 1987] \u201cintercede for him\u201d from Heaven.<\/p>\n Amazing what happens to you if you offend the \u201crainbow lobby\u201d!<\/p>\n In a moment you are transformed into manure on which one can freely spit, even if for 10 years they have raised you up as an absolute point of reference.<\/p>\n Whoever touches that bare wire [that topic] electrocutes himself\u2026<\/p>\n Always.<\/p>\n (…)<\/p>\n For years I have been writing that this deadly situation, also in our Church, is characterized by the impossibility of being clear in the affirmation of the truth, preferring the path of ambiguity.<\/p>\n The \u201clocura,\u201d the madness of Francis, is wanting to call things by their names, and he is now being extremely clear.<\/p>\n Abortion?<\/b> \u201cIt\u2019s like hiring a hitman.\u201d<\/p>\n Gender ideology?<\/b> \u201cIt is the greatest danger, it resembles the method with which the Hitler Youth was trained.\u201d<\/p>\n Will there be women priests or deacons?<\/b> \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n Will ecclesiastical celibacy be abolished?<\/b> \u201cI won\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Can gay couples be blessed?<\/b> \u201cPeople are blessed, not the union, marriage and family are born from a man and a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n Euthanasia and assisted suicide?<\/b> \u201cThey are practices to be rejected, daughters of the throwaway culture.\u201d<\/p>\n And the rented womb?<\/b> \u201cIt\u2019s modern slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n Francis\u2019 practice is to use words with unusual clarity, with an Argentine air and a Jesuit razor.<\/p>\n Mind you, I have summarized statements that have spanned the entire pontificate.<\/p>\n Whoever wanted to hear them could have listened from the outset.<\/p>\n But it was convenient instead to turn up the volume on Francis\u2019 words of the Church\u2019s openness, with the utmost mercy, to \u201ceveryone, everyone, everyone,\u201d and to exploit those words by stating that, by embracing people, one is also legitimizing their sin.<\/p>\n The communicators [the media] wanted to use some communication errors, which also existed, to present a papacy paradoxically aligned against the Church herself.<\/p>\n It is no coincidence that a few days ago in another of the main Italian newspapers, La Stampa, the director signed an editorial stating that political debate should not be allowed on \u201cabortion, euthanasia and sexual orientation,\u201d because the line can only be that of woke conformism.<\/p>\n Pope Francis has been used to get to this goal: to delegitimize the nonnegotiable principles of Catholics.<\/p>\n I believe that Bergoglio understood this well, and in this (present) phase of his pontificate he is taking the liberty, for some people a \u201ccrazy\u201d liberty (the locura, precisely), to use very clear and unequivocal words to affirm his thought, which is that of a Pope of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n I believe that the recent Dignitas Infinita<\/i> document has put the seal of doctrinal clarity on all the delicate topics of contemporary times.<\/p>\n And in doing so, Francis… ended up in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n In these 10 years of insults suffered on TV, radio and in newspapers as well as on social media, I have always reiterated that Bergoglio\u2019s papacy was in absolute continuity with that of Ratzinger and Wojtyla, that the pastoral differences did not change anything on the doctrinal level, that non-negotiable principles remain non-negotiable for Catholics.<\/p>\n It cannot be otherwise; those who affirmed the opposite had the sole aim of destroying the influence of the Church in society.<\/p>\n Today Gramellini extols Ratzinger as a \u201cclassical dancer\u201d to contrast him with Bergoglio as a \u201cwrestler.\u201d<\/p>\n Who would have thought \u2014 after a decade spent describing Benedict XVI<\/b> as the leader of the \u201cobscurantists\u201d who were fighting against the \u201cprogressive\u201d Francis. Andrea Scanzi<\/b> defined me in this way twice \u2014 as an \u201cobscurantist\u201d \u2014 a few days ago on the Otto e Mezzo television broadcast with [Italian television journalist] Lilli Gruber<\/b>.<\/p>\n Who knows what he would say about Francis today, not understanding that the Catholic Church is the only source of light in an Italy darkened by their ferocious conformism, which now pretends to be scandalized by a frank word used by the Pope in a closed-door meeting to explain that as Catholics, we embrace everyone, but we do not resign ourselves to the spread of the sin that we call by its name.<\/p>\n The Pope says that we need to speak clearly, with \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno,\u201d without always bogging everything down with indigestible ambiguities in order to make everything go smoothly. This attitude seems crazy to the Gramellinis, to the Scanzis, to all the conformists of our time, who also rapidly change in their prejudices, according to convenience.<\/p>\n Long live the Pope\u2019s inappropriate words, long live the carelessness of Francis.<\/p>\n The logo of the site Stilum Curiae of Marco Tosatti, who often hosts Andinolfi\u2019s articles.<\/p><\/div>\n Stilum Curiae, The Pope is continually portrayed as a “progressive” \u2014 but how “progressive” is he really? By ITV staff\/Vatican News Pope Francis made remarks to the Plenary Assembly of the Italian episcopate on May 20 at a private, closed-door gathering which, nevertheless, found their way into the press via an anonymous attendee at the meeting. When asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":63075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011,45,41],"tags":[1360,136],"class_list":["post-63070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-culture","category-magazine","tag-homosexuality","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/insidethevatican.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/41I5906-x-1024x690.png\")
\u201cCareless\u201d frankness<\/b><\/h4>\n
\nThe Pope and the Froci*ggine<\/em>: Long live Francesco’s craziness<\/h2>\n
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\n<\/i>Tuesday, May 28, 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"