The Pope’s reported use of derogatory language about gay people has been branded “disappointing” by a London-based LGBT+ Catholic group.
Italian media reported that Pope Francis used the term “frociaggine” when answering no to a question on whether gay men should be admitted to seminaries to train for the priesthood.
The Vatican has not commented on the remark – believed to translate to an offensive slur – reported to have been made in a meeting behind closed doors earlier this month.
If it is as it has been reported it is offensive. I think it is disappointing. He should be more careful about how he phrases things, particularly in these kind of off-the-cuff remarks
— Martin Pendergast, LGBT+ Catholics Westminster
Martin Pendergast, secretary of LGBT+ Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council, told the PA news agency: “If it is as it has been reported it is offensive. I think it is disappointing. He should be more careful about how he phrases things, particularly in these kind of off-the-cuff remarks.
“I think he tends to use these slang words without understanding the ramifications they can have.”
But, asked whether he feels the remark will be a step back for relations for the church and its gay members, Mr Pendergast replied “certainly not” and questioned the way in which the comment had emerged from the private meeting.
He said: “I just wonder what the rationale was for whoever released this to the media – was it used to weaponise against the Pope’s more consistent LGBT+ welcoming approach?
“It would have been better to have challenged the comment within the meeting (rather than leaking it).”
Asked about the comment, a spokesman from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) said: “Echoing the consistent message of the Synod and this papacy, the Catholic Church is a place of welcome for all.”
In 2013, Pope Francis was reported to have indicated he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, saying: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”<
In December last year he formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, as long as such blessings do not give the impression of a marriage ceremony, reversing a 2021 policy by the Vatican’s doctrine office, which barred such blessings on the grounds that God “does not and cannot bless sin”.
🌈 🙏”Making the impossible, possible”
“25 years ago we changed the world, slightly.”
These were the words that we heard at our 25th anniversary conference, marking 25 years from the date of the first masses welcoming LGBT+ Catholics in a little convent church in Islington. pic.twitter.com/39iJnE2Q70
— LGBT+ Catholics Westminster (@LGBTCathWestmin) May 27, 2024
The Pope’s most recent reported comment came as LGBT+ Catholics Westminster marked its 25th anniversary, with a celebratory Mass on Sunday.
Bishop Paul McAleenan, who is Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and was representing Cardinal Vincent Nichols at the service, told those gathered that the church “must never be closed, it must always be a church that includes and makes room for all”.
He thanked the LGBT+ group for its “value” and “contribution to the life of the church”.
Lawyer Laura Sgro’, left, talks to Mirjam Kovac, center, and Gloria Branciani, as they arrive for an interview with the Associated Press, in Rome, Friday, June 28, 2024. Kovac and Branciani are two of five women who urged Catholic bishops around the world to remove from their churches mosaics by ex-Jesuit artist Rev. Marko Rupnik after they accused him of psychologically, spiritually and sexually abusing them.
By NICOLE WINFIELD
The scandal over a famous ex-Jesuit artist who is accused of psychologically, spiritually and sexually abusing adult women came to a head Friday after some of his alleged victims and the pope’s own anti-abuse adviser asked for his artworks not to be promoted or displayed.
The separate initiatives underscored how the case of the Rev. Marko Rupnik, whose mosaics grace some of the Catholic Church’s most-visited shrines and sanctuaries, continues to cause a headache for the Vatican and Pope Francis, who as a Jesuit himself has been drawn into the scandal.
Early Friday, five women who say they were abused by Rupnik sent letters to Catholic bishops around the world asking them to remove his mosaics from their churches, saying their continued display in places of worship was “inappropriate” and retraumatizing to victims.
Separately, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, head of the pope’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, sent his own letter urging Vatican offices to stop displaying Rupnik’s works. He said continued use of the works ignores the pain of victims and could imply a defense of the Slovene priest.
The two-pronged messages were issued after the Vatican’s top communications official strongly defended using images of Rupnik artwork on the Vatican News website, insisting that it caused no harm to victims and was a Christian response.
The Rupnik scandal first exploded publicly in late 2022 when the Jesuit religious order admitted that he had been excommunicated briefly for having committed one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes: using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity.
The case continued to create problems for the Jesuits and Francis, since a dozen more women came forward saying they too had been victimized by Rupnik. The Vatican initially refused to prosecute, arguing the claims were too old.
Nevertheless, after hearing from more victims, the Jesuits expelled Rupnik from the order and Francis — under pressure because of suspicions he had protected his fellow Jesuit — waived the statute of limitations so that the Vatican could open a proper canonical trial.
To date Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations and refused to respond to his Jesuit superiors during their investigation. His supporters at his Centro Aletti art studio have denounced what they have called a media “lynching.”
The debate about what to do with Rupnik’s works as the Vatican trial into him continues isn’t so much a matter of “cancel culture” or the age-old debate about whether one can appreciate art, such as a Caravaggio, separately from the actions of the artist. The reason is because some of Rupnik’s alleged victims say the abuse occurred precisely during the creation of the artwork itself, rendering the resulting mosaics a triggering and traumatic reminder of what they endured.
One nun said she was abused on the scaffolding as a mosaic was being installed in a church, another as she posed as his model.
“Notwithstanding the years that have passed, the trauma that each suffered has not been erased, and it lives again in the presence of each of Father Rupnik’s works,” said their letter, which was signed by attorney Laura Sgro on behalf of her five clients and sent Friday to more than 100 bishops, Vatican embassies and religious superiors around the world who are known to have Rupnik mosaics in their territories.
Gloria Branciani, one of the first Rupnik victims to go public, said she long wrestled with the question of what to do with his mosaics. But in an interview Friday, she said she came to the conclusion they must be removed from places of worship after learning that other women had been abused precisely in their creation.
“This doesn’t mean destroy the work, it means it can be moved somewhere else,” she said in an interview Friday. “The important thing is that it not remain connected to the expression of people’s faith … because using a work that is borne from an inspiration of abuse cannot remain in a place where people go to pray.”
The Vatican trial against Rupnik is ongoing — Sgro says she hasn’t been contacted to provide testimony of her clients — and Rupnik’s many defenders in the Vatican and beyond say it’s important to withhold final judgment until the Vatican makes its ruling.
But the scandal came back to life last week when the head of the Vatican’s communications department, Paolo Ruffini, was asked at a Catholic media conference why the Vatican News website continues to feature an image of a Rupnik mosaic.
Ruffini defended using the image, saying he was in no position to judge Rupnik and that in the history of civilization, “removing, deleting or destroying art has never been a good choice.”
When it was pointed out that he hadn’t mentioned the impact on victims of seeing Rupnik’s artwork promoted by the Vatican, Ruffini noted that the women weren’t minors and that while “closeness to the victims is important, I don’t know that this (removing the artwork) is the way of healing.”
When the reporter, Paulina Guziak of Our Sunday Visitor News, suggested otherwise, Ruffini said: “I think you’re wrong. I think you’re wrong. I really think you’re wrong.”
His comments shocked victims and apparently prompted O’Malley to send a letter to all Vatican offices saying he hoped that “pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense” of alleged perpetrators of abuse.
“We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering,” O’Malley wrote on behalf of the commission June 26.
The women who wrote their own letter said they greatly appreciated O’Malley’s statement, which they took as a show of support that came as a pleasant and unexpected surprise.
“It’s a sign that the times have matured,” said Mirjam Kovac, a Slovene canon lawyer at the Pontifical Gregorian University who is a former member of Rupnik’s community.
Sister Samuelle, a French nun who says Rupnik manipulated her over years, taking advantage of her vulnerability to eventually touch her intimately while on a mosaic installation scaffolding, thanked O’Malley “from my heart.”
“In this difficult, weighty and traumatic situation, we took this important step with our letter. And I receive his declaration as a sign that there’s someone else who cares,” she said in an interview.
For advocates of victims, the Rupnik scandal and Ruffini’s comments were continued evidence that the church in general, and Vatican in particular, continually dismiss abuse of adult women as mere sinful behavior by priests rather than traumatic abuse that affects them for life.
“The continued use of Rupnik’s art is incredibly hurtful to many abuse survivors, who see this as emblematic of an ongoing lack of concern for the needs of all survivors,” Sara Larson, executive director of Awake, a survivor support and advocacy organization, said in an email.
Removal of the mosaics, however, is no simple matter since some cover entire basilica façades (Lourdes, France); entire interiors (the Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel); or, in the case of the St. Padre Pio sanctuary in southern Italy, the entire floor-to-ceiling gilded smaller church.
Other churches have smaller-scale mosaics but they are still prominent. The Rupnik-designed mosaics inside the Basilica of the Holy Trinity in Fatima, Portugal are so integral to its artistic and iconographic importance that the shrine is seeking status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
But other churches are reconsidering. Bishop Jean-Marc Micas, whose diocese includes the Lourdes, France shrine, announced the creation of a study group last year to consider what to do with Rupnik’s mosaics. A decision is expected soon.
A reflection is also taking place at the Knights of Columbus’ St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C. The Knights said the outcome of the Vatican’s canonical trial against Rupnik would be “an important factor in our considerations.”
— The ruling in the homeland of Pope Francis cast a spotlight on the long-standing of abuse of nuns by priests and bishops in the Catholic Church.
FILE – Women gather round the San Bernardo Convent in support of the convent’s cloistered nuns who accused the Archbishop of Salta Mario Antonio Cargnello and other church officials of gender-based psychological and physical violence, in Salta, Argentina, May 3, 2022. An Argentine court ruled on Thursday, April 4, 2024, that Cargnello and three other church officials committed different forms of violence against the cloistered nuns of the convent.
An Argentine judge on Friday ruled that 20 cloistered nuns had suffered abuse for more than two decades at the hands of high-ranking clergy in the country’s conservative north, and ordered the accused archbishop and church officials to undergo psychological treatment and training in gender discrimination.
The ruling in the homeland of Pope Francis cast a spotlight on the long-standing of abuse of nuns by priests and bishops in the Catholic Church.
Though long overshadowed by other church scandals, such abuses in religious life are increasingly being aired and denounced as a result of nuns feeling emboldened by the #MeToo movement, which has a corollary in the church, #NunsToo.
“I conclude and affirm that the nuns have suffered acts of gender violence religiously, physically, psychologically and economically for more than 20 years,” Judge Carolina Cáceres said in the ruling from Salta in northwestern Argentina.
She also ordered the verdict be conveyed to Francis.
The four accused clergy members have denied committing any violence. The archbishop’s lawyer, Eduardo Romani, dismissed Friday’s ruling as baseless and vowed to appeal. Still, he said, the archbishop would abide by the order to receive treatment and anti-discrimination training through a local NGO “whether or not he agrees with its basis.”
But complaints have largely fallen on deaf ears at the Vatican and in the rigid all-male hierarchy at the local level in Argentina, apparently prompting the nuns in Salta to seek remedy in the secular justice system. A similar dynamic played out when the clergy abuse of minors scandal first erupted decades ago and victims turned to the courts because of inaction by church authorities.
The 20 nuns from the reclusive order of Discalced Carmelites at San Bernardo Monastery — dedicated to solitude, silence and daily contemplative prayer — brought their case forward in 2022, sending shockwaves through conservative Salta.
Their complaints cited a range of mistreatment including verbal insults, threats, humiliation and physical — although not sexual — assault.
The nuns describe archbishop Mario Cargnello as grabbing, slapping and shaking women. At one point, they said, Cargnello squeezed the lips of a nun to silence her. At another, he pounced on a nun, striking her as he struggled to snatch a camera from her hands. They also accused Cargello of borrowing nuns’ money without paying them back.
Cáceres, the judge, described the instances as “physical and psychological gender violence.”
— The PRRI poll found that the vast majority of those who are unaffiliated are content to stay that way. Just 9% of respondents say they’re looking for a religion that would be right for them.
Symbols of the three monotheistic religions
By Jason DeRose
People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That’s similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.
PRRI found that the number of those who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” has held steady since 2013, but those who identify as atheists have doubled (from 2% to 4%) and those who say they’re agnostic has more than doubled (from 2% to 5%).
This study looks at which faith traditions those unaffiliated people are coming from.
“Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals,” says Melissa Deckman, PRRI’s chief executive officer. “And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%.”
That these people are not looking for a religion has, Deckman says, implications for how and even whether houses of worship should try to attract new people.
Among other findings: The Catholic Church is losing more members than it’s gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.
There is much lower religious churn among Black Protestants and among Jews who seem overall happy in their faith traditions and tend to stay there.
As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion’s teachings.
And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people.
Those numbers were especially high with one group in particular.
“Religion’s negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church,” Deckman says. “We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.”
Hispanic Americans are also more likely to say they’ve left a religion over LGBTQ issues. Other reasons cited for leaving: clergy sexual abuse and over-involvement in politics.
The new PRRI report is based on a survey of more than 5,600 adults late last year.
About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.
The survey also asked about the prevalence of the so-called “prosperity Gospel.” It found that 31% of respondents agreed with the statement “God always rewards those who have good faith with good health, financial success, and fulfilling personal relationships.”
Black Americans tend to agree more with these theological beliefs than other racial or ethnic groups. And Republicans are more likely than independents and Democrats to hold such beliefs.
Scott Peyton, a former deacon whose son was molested by a priest he served alongside in St. Landry Parish, has been excommunicated by Lafayette Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel.
Scott Peyton, a former deacon whose son was molested by a priest he served alongside in St. Landry Parish, has been excommunicated by Lafayette Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel.
Peyton served as a deacon in the diocese until December 2023. That’s when he resigned citing “distressing revelations regarding sexual abuse scandals involving members of the clergy.”
“The magnitude of these revelations has deeply shaken my faith and trust in the institution to which I have dedicated a significant portion of my life,” Peyton wrote in his resignation letter to Bishop Deshotel. “This decision is not a rejection of my faith in God or my commitment to living a life guided by Christian principles. Instead, it reflects a conscientious objection to the way the Church has handled cases of sexual abuse, and a desire to distance myself from an institution that, currently, falls short of the values it professes.”
In 2019, Father Michael Guidry was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to molesting Peyton’s teenage son. Peyton and Guidry served together at St. Peter’s Church in Morrow. The family settled a civil lawsuit against the diocese in 2021.
Bishop Deshotel wrote to Peyton following his resignation.
“I was sad to receive your email deciding to leave the Church and cease to exercise your vocation as Deacon,” wrote Bishop Deshotel in an email provided by Peyton to News 15. “I will remember you in my prayers and masses that you be open to the gift of faith in the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ and built on the Apostles. Sacramentally you are a Deacon though you choose not to exercise your ministry.”
But this week, months after he resigned, Peyton received a decree from Bishop Deshotel stating that he had been excommunicated from the church.
Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel
In the letter to Peyton, Bishop Deshotel wrote:
“A bishop never wishes to communicate a censure to anyone. I am aware that your family has suffered a trauma but the answer does not lie in leaving the Most Holy Eucharist: We are not Catholics because the Church on earth is perfect but because the Lord has entrusted us to a mystery greater than ourselves, which He established as the means to our salvation. The censures of the Church are intended to be medicinal, perhaps as much for those who impose them as for those who are subject to them. It is with this objective that I mournfully must declare them.”
Peyton worries his excommunication sends a harmful message to survivors of clergy sex abuse, especially given there is no indication his son’s abuser has been excommunicated.
“If molesting a child is not grave enough to get excommunicated, but telling the bishop that I don’t agree with how he’s running the diocese and how the church is handling the sex abuse crisis, if that’s a grave sin, then I guess I’ll wear the badge of excommunication as an honor. I think the hypocrisy in this excommunication speaks volumes of the leadership of Bishop Deshotel. I think he should resign his leadership and those that are running this diocese behind the scenes should step down along with him,” explained Peyton.
