Pope Francis has apologized following reports that he used an anti-gay slur during a meeting with bishops. The Vatican in an official statement said, “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, as reported by others.”
As Pope Francis has stated on several occasions, “In the Church, there is room for everyone, everyone! No one is useless, no one is superfluous, there is room for everyone. Just as we are, everyone.”
On Monday, Italian media reported that unnamed Italian bishops claimed Pope Francis jokingly used the term “faggotness” while speaking in Italian during a meeting. He reportedly used the term while reaffirming the Vatican’s ban on allowing gay men to enter seminaries and be ordained priests.
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Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said that Pope Francis was aware of the reports. He noted that the Argentine pope, who has made outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy, has long insisted there is “room for everyone” in the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis was addressing an assembly of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which recently approved a new document outlining training for Italian seminarians. The document, which hasn’t been published pending review by the Holy See, reportedly aimed to provide some flexibility within the Vatican’s absolute ban on gay priests.
The Vatican’s ban was articulated in a 2005 document from the Congregation for Catholic Education and reiterated in a subsequent document in 2016. These documents state that the church cannot admit to seminaries or ordain men who “practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture.”
In his May 20 meeting with the Italian bishops, Francis strongly reaffirmed this position, joking that “there is already an air of faggotness” in seminaries, according to Italian media reports, following initial reporting from the gossip site Dagospia.
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