Stick to your vows or resign: Pope tells gay priests, nuns, to quit

Actively gay people should leave the Catholic clergy, says the Pope, who also warns homosexuality is becoming “fashionable”.

Pope Francis addresses the crowd from the window of the apostolic palace overlooking Saint Peter's S. Picture: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Pope Francis is worried about the number of gay men joining the priesthood and fears that homosexuality is becoming “fashionable” in society, he told an interviewer.

Francis’s comments, made during an interview with a Spanish priest, mark a shift in tone from his response, “Who am I to judge?” when he was asked about homosexuality in 2013.

While he has previously spoken of the need for better screening of candidates for the religious life, the Pope’s comments on actively gay priests are some of his clearest to date.

Speaking to Fernando Prado, a missionary priest, the Pope said that “it is no secret” that gay men had become priests, adding: “This is something that worries me.”

In the interview with Father Prado, which will be published in a book this week, Francis said: “In our societies it even seems that homosexuality has become fashionable and this mentality is in some way influencing the life of the church.”

In excerpts from the book published in the Italian media, the Pope added that a priest had told him that homosexuality in the church was “not serious — just an expression of affection”.

Francis said he that disagreed, saying: “There is no room for this type of affection.”

He cited a 2016 Vatican document that ruled out candidates “who practise homosexuality, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture”.

He said the church had to be “demanding” in choosing candidates for what is known as the consecrated life.

“For this reason, the church urges that persons with this rooted tendency not be accepted into (priestly) ministry or consecrated life,” he said. He urged homosexuals who are already priests or nuns to be celibate and responsible to avoid creating scandal.

Stick to vows or resign

Catholic catechism rules that homosexuality is “objectively disordered” and that gay sex is “contrary to the natural law”, but the Vatican has said that men can join the priesthood if their “homosexual tendencies are only the expression of a transitory problem”, and if candidates have “overcome” their homosexuality three years before becoming deacons, a stage before taking their vows of celibacy as priests.

Francis said that homosexuals who had become priests should stick to their vows or resign.

This also applied to women who wanted to enter female religious communities to become nuns.

“It is better that they leave the priesthood or the consecrated life rather than live a double life,” he said.

Although the Pope’s comments about gay priests were in line with Vatican thinking, his warning about homosexuality becoming “fashionable” appeared to clash with his reported statement to a gay man in May that “God made you that way and loves you as you are.”

Those comments, which were seen as papal acceptance that homosexuality was not a choice, were reported by Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean victim of sexual abuse by priests, who spent days with the Pope at the Vatican to discuss his ordeal.

Mr Cruz said that Francis had told him: “The Pope loves you as you are, you have to be happy with who you are.”

The debate about gay priests has intensified as conservative Catholics who oppose Francis’s mercy-before-doctrine papacy claim that the epidemic of sexual abuse in the church can be blamed on homosexual priests — and accuse Francis of doing little to root them out.

The interview was conducted in August, less than two weeks before former Vatican ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano alleged a “homosexual network” existed in the Vatican whose members helped promote each other’s careers in the church.

The Catholic Church has been haunted for more than two decades by evidence of thousands of cases of sexual abuse of minors by clergy around the world, in countries ranging from the United States to Australia, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Chile.

In July, former American cardinal Theodore McCarrick became the first cardinal to resign in nearly 100 years, after allegations he sexually abused a 16-year-old boy.

— The Times. Additional reporting — Reuters