Pope Francis again hurled anti-gay slurs during a meeting with priests in Rome on Tuesday, Italian news media reported, using the same insults. He was accused of usingIn summarizing the meeting, the Vatican said only that the pope had warned against allowing gay men into Roman Catholic seminaries.
The Vatican did not respond to the report by Italy’s two most prominent news agencies. ANSA and Adekronoshe again used the word “frociaggine,” an offensive Italian slang term for gay men. The report cited anonymous sources who said they had been present at the meeting.
The New York Times could not independently verify whether the pope used the term. A Vatican spokesman declined to comment Tuesday evening.
The Pope has been accused of using the same term last month He discussed the issue in a private meeting with Italian bishops, according to several people who attended the meeting who spoke to Italian news media on condition of anonymity.
The reports sparked widespread backlash and prompted the pope to issue an apology through the director of the Vatican press office, saying: “The pope never intended to offend or to express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologizes to those who have been offended by his reported use of words by others.”
According to a summary of Tuesday’s meeting at Rome’s Salesian University, the pope “spoke of the dangers of ideology in the Church” and reiterated that the Church should welcome “people with homosexual tendencies” but should “carefully” admit them to seminaries, Vatican News reported.
The Vatican said the closed-door meeting also discussed “pastoral” and “current” topics such as drug abuse, low election turnout and wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Francis is widely credited with taking steps to welcome the LGBTQ community within the Roman Catholic Church, delivering a fairly inclusive message and deciding to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.
But previous reports of the pope using homophobic remarks have caused dissatisfaction and alienation among some LGBTQ groups both inside and outside the church.
Following reports in May that a gay pastor Writing in American magazinesA reporter for the Jesuit publication Catholic News said he was “shocked and saddened” by Pope Francis’ comments and said “we need more than an apology for the pope’s homophobic remarks.”
Italian politician Alessandro Zan is a gay man and a prominent defender of the LGBTQ community. Wrote on social media Then: “There aren’t too many ‘frociaggine’. There are too many homophobes.”
