“Without a clarification,” Mr. DeBernardo mentioned, “his phrases will probably be interpreted as a blanket ban on accepting any homosexual man to a seminary.” He referred to as on the pope to “present a clearer assertion on his views about homosexual monks, so a lot of whom faithfully serve the folks of God every day.”
An article revealed by The New York Times in 2019 took a have a look at some two dozen monks and seminarians within the United States who shared particulars of their lives as homosexual males throughout the church. Though solely a handful of monks within the United States have come out publicly, homosexual monks and researchers estimate that homosexual males in all probability make up at the least 30 to 40 p.c of the Catholic clergy within the United States. Like all Catholic monks, they take a vow of celibacy.
In reporting the incident, some Italian information shops have instructed that Francis used the time period jokingly or that, as a nonnative Italian speaker, he was unaware of the gravity of the slur.
Known for an off-the-cuff, avuncular fashion, Francis is not any stranger to linguistic gaffes.
Shortly after his election as pope, he informed a gaggle of nuns that they need to be moms, “not a spinster.” Two years later, chatting with reporters throughout an in-flight information convention, Francis mentioned that ought to a good friend ever insult the pope’s mom, “he’ll get punched for it! This is regular! It is regular.” Also in 2015, referring to contraception, Francis mentioned: “Some folks consider that — pardon my language — with a purpose to be good Catholics, we ought to be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood.”
And this was not his first public apology. After a video confirmed Francis twice slapping the palms of a lady who had grabbed his whereas he was greeting the trustworthy in December 2020, he apologized. “Many occasions we lose our persistence,” he mentioned throughout his weekly viewers the day after the incident. “I do, too, and I’m sorry for yesterday’s unhealthy instance.”
In its assertion Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman prevented confirming that the pope had used the time period reported in Italian media, because the Vatican doesn’t reveal what the pope says behind closed doorways. But the assertion did say that Francis had “acknowledged on a number of events, ‘In the church there may be room for everybody, for everybody! No one is ineffective, nobody is superfluous. There is room for everybody. Just as we’re, everybody.’”