Sir, – On his flight back to Rome from Brazil, Pope Francis gave his views to journalists on gay people (World News July 30th).
“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I, for charity, to judge him?” he said.
This sounds like a benign statement, even a non-judgmental statement, even a supportive statement, until one looks below the surface.
What if he had said: “If a person is heterosexual and seeks God and has good will, who am I, for charity, to judge him?”
This would sound preposterous. He would rightly be accused of having a deep- seated prejudice against heterosexuals.
Pope Francis would like it both ways; to be seen as a friend of gays, yet doing nothing to support them.
He has made it clear there will be no change in his organisation’s teaching on sexuality. This means his predecessor’s statement that the homosexual orientation “is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil” stays on the books.
Pope Francis may seem like a kindly smiling father figure, but he is in fact even more dangerous than his predecessor, who at least had the decency not to smile as he made his horrifically judgmental statements on gay people. – Yours, etc,
DECLAN KELLY,
Whitechurch Road,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.