I’ll give message to Pope on behalf of those who feel excluded: Varadkar
TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar said he plans to speak to Pope Francis about Catholics who are women, LGBT or divorced, and who feel excluded from the Church.
Mr Varadkar said the Irish people will want him to get the message across that the Catholic Church needs to do more in dealing with child sex abuse.
He also wants to relay the message of Irish Catholics who don’t feel they can participate because of who they are.
“There are a lot of people who are devout Catholics but ...feel excluded from the Church because of the treatment of women and the rules around how women can participate in the Church because they are from LGBT background or they are divorced,” he told RTÉ News.
Conflict
“I know that really hurts for them because there is a conflict on who they are and the rules of the faith which they follow. Certainly, if I have the opportunity to speak to Pope Francis, I will want to relay that message.”
Meanwhile, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland has said he is not aware of any ‘conversion therapy’ programme – which tries to change LGBT people’s sexuality – operating within the Irish Church.
At a press conference at the World Meeting of Families yesterday, Archbishop Eamon Martin said he would not support the idea of “some kind of psychotherapy” such as conversion therapy happening within an Irish Church setting.
Some Catholic groups, such as the US-based Courage group, advocate conversion therapy for gays in the belief that it converts them to a heterosexual life.
Up to recent years, the Legionaries of Christ religious order ran conversion therapy courses in Ireland. But the last known course ran in 2012.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago told media in the RDS, “We have to make sure that a so-called conversion therapy model doesn’t start from the premise that the individual is in some way deformed or sick like somebody else who needs a therapy.”
He also warned that if conversion therapy was the first message that the adults give young people struggling with sexual identity questions, “then I think we are setting them on the wrong path”.
He added: “Everybody struggles with how they live out their human sexuality; but to stigmatise one group over another can be very damaging.”
Packed
The stigmatisation of LGBT people by the Church was the theme of Fr James Martin’s address to a packed 1,000-seater auditorium in the RDS. He said LGBT people have often been treated like “lepers” by the Church and stressed that it was not a sin simply to be LGBT.
In his much-anticipated address, the American Jesuit said LGBT Catholics have felt excluded from the Church for so long that any experience of welcome can be life-changing.
Speaking at a conservative Catholic event promoting the Church’s teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman, Fr Martin stressed that LGBT people do not choose their orientation.
‘To stigmatise one group over another can be very damaging’ – Cardinal Blase Cupich