Pope Francis repeated an anti-gay slur throughout a assembly with monks in Rome on Tuesday, Italian information shops reported, the identical offensive time period he was accused of utilizing two weeks in the past. The Vatican, in summarizing the gathering, stated solely that the pontiff had cautioned about admitting homosexual males into Roman Catholic seminaries.
The Vatican didn’t deal with the stories by two of essentially the most distinguished information companies in Italy, ANSA and Adnkronos, that he had once more used the phrase “frociaggine,” an offensive Italian slang time period referring to homosexual males. The stories cited nameless sources they stated had been current on the assembly.
The New York Times couldn’t independently confirm the pope’s use of the time period. A spokesperson for the Vatican declined to remark late on Tuesday evening.
The pope was accused of utilizing the identical time period final month at a non-public assembly with Italian bishops, in response to a number of folks current on the assembly who spoke anonymously to the Italian information media.
Those stories ignited widespread backlash and drew an apology from the pope, issued by the director of the Holy See’s press workplace, who stated: “The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term, reported by others.”
According to Vatican News, the Holy See’s on-line information website, Tuesday’s assembly befell on the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. There, it stated in its abstract, the pope “spoke about the danger of ideologies in the church” and reiterated that whereas the church ought to welcome folks “with homosexual tendencies,” it ought to train “prudence” in admitting them into seminaries.
The Vatican stated the closed-door assembly additionally addressed “pastoral” and “current” themes, like substance abuse, low voter turnout in elections and the wars within the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Francis has been broadly credited with making strikes to welcome the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood within the Roman Catholic Church, delivering a largely inclusive message and deciding to permit monks to bless same-sex {couples}.
But the earlier stories concerning the pope’s use of the homophobic slur upset and alienated some members of the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood, inside and out of doors the church.
After the stories in May, a homosexual priest wrote in America magazine, a Jesuit publication, that he was “shocked and saddened” by the remarks and that “we need more than an apology for Pope Francis’ homophobic slur.”
The Italian politician Alessandro Zan, who’s homosexual and a distinguished champion for the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood, wrote on social media then: “There is not too much ‘frociaggine’. There are too many homophobes.”
