Vatican City, May 20, 2018 / 09:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A victim of the Chilean clergy abuse crisis who met privately with Pope Francis told a Spanish news source that the Pope told him to be happy being gay, because God made him that way.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of Chilean abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima, met with Pope Francis privately in April after being invited to the Vatican along with other victims of abuse.
In comments to the press on May 2, Cruz said that the Pope was “sincere, attentive and deeply apologetic for the situation.”
“For me, the pope was contrite, he was truly sorry,” Cruz said. “I felt also that he was hurting, which for me was very solemn, because it’s not often that the pope says sorry to you…he said, ‘I was part of the problem, I caused this and I apologize.’”
In a later interview with Spanish newspaper El País, Cruz was asked whether he and Pope Francis had spoken about homosexuality during their meeting, as Cruz identifies as gay.
Cruz confirmed that they did speak about homosexuality, and that he explained to the Pope that he is not a bad person and tries not to hurt anybody.
“He told me ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care. The Pope loves you as you are, you have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz recalled. The comment is controversial because it evokes a theological debate about the morality of homosexuality.
The Catechism also states that homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also states that people with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”
The Vatican has not yet confirmed or clarified the comments that Cruz said the Pope made regarding homosexuality.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Pope Francis’ connection to the severe side of the Holy Spirit’s scripture in this and in the death penalty ( Rom.1:26-27/Rom.13:3-4) is non existent. His two predecessors were likewise disconnected from other severity related themes ( EV sect.40/ Verbum Domini sect.42). It’s pandemic and started in the early 20th century movement of Catholic biblical scholars towards Protestant liberal biblical scholarship which has good points and very bad habits also. Both the bad and the good entered Catholicism and the problem at its root is Biblical. Romans one is implicitly saying between the lines that heterosexuality is a result of passing many tests of loving God and homosexuality is the result of drift from God into excess which gradually leads to gay acts. The one exception I see would be the biological chimera who is the result of two fraternal twin eggs ( boy and girl) lying too close and merging into one embryo..the resulting one person then has both male and female dna which is the one case I know of…of sincere, non sinful gender confusion.
Hardly ‘disconnected’ with John Paul II.
A temptation regardless of the origination.
The actual act in homosexuality is always a choice.
He called the death penalty “ cruel and unnecessary” in St. Louis in 1999 and sought world abolition of it despite his own catechism being a little better than that. To call some action cruel in itself is tantamount to calling it intrinsic evil and is to contradict the over 33 death penalties God gave to the Jews…and one death penalty God gave the Gentiles. He was not connected to all scripture as Aquinas was.
The defenders of Pope Francis will either embrace this or spin it. Let us see if there is a press release from the Vatican on Monday or Tuesday.
Pope Bergoglio’s statement is blasphemy since he claims that the All-Good God has committed “an act of grave depravity” by creating a homosexual person who, as such, is “intrinsically disordered” morally. This statement is also manifest heresy, directly contradicted by the entire Magisterium of the Church and explicitly summarized in the post-conciliar Catechism.
I can just imagine the press release that is being crafted by Vigano that will attempt to explain this latest example of Pontifical prudential absurdity.
New Gospel fragment discovered in Jordanian cave: “And Jesus said unto him, ‘you’re fine just the way you are; go, and change nothing about yourself.”
Pope Francis seems to flatly disagree with St. Paul’s assessment of the matter. If only Paul the Apostle could have understood Jorge Bergoglio’s take on humility and mercy, I’m sure he would have agreed with our Argentine pontiff and backed off all that nasty stuff we find in Romans 1:18-27. Of course, who could be expected to equal the theological brilliance and consequent insights that Francis has, as Vatican insiders assure us? Ah, we’re just so fortunate to live in this pope’s era of enlightened Christianity!
Oh, yes!!! And if only Bergoglio could have lived 2000 years ago, penned the gospels
and omitted the pesky warnings of Jesus which St. Paul reiterated, there would be so much less confusion in the world!! You need to hand it to Bergoglio. He is doing his best with a false torch of enlightenment to lead the masses already in darkness into a fiery abyss. Bergoglio told an abuse victim that God made him gay and that he should be glad to be gay??? Strange, many former homosexuals claim that sexual abuse was a cause of their homossexuality. Is Bergoglio suggegsting the the guy should be glad that he was abused????
According to what has been reported, Pope Francis did not say homosexual acts were o.k. If Pope Francis did say “God made you that way” he is going against what is in the Catechism in section 2357 says about homosexuality, that is “…Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained…”
One item that would be quite tragic in all of the clergy abuse scandals that I haven’t seen addressed is if the abuse may be at the root of some of the victims’ homosexual tendencies.
Here’s the section in the Catechism on Homosexuality in its entirety:
Chastity and homosexuality
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”