NICOLE
WINFIELD
ABOARD THE PAPAL
AIRCRAFT (AP) — Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't
judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and
wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.
"If someone is gay and
he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis
asked.
His predecessor, Pope
Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted
homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more
conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.
Francis' remarks came
Monday during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip
in Brazil.
He was funny and candid
during his first news conference that lasted almost an hour and a half. He
didn't dodge a single question, even thanking the journalist who raised
allegations reported by an Italian news magazine that one of his trusted
monsignors was involved in a scandalous gay tryst.
Francis said he
investigated and found nothing to back up the allegations.
Francis was asked about
Italian media reports suggesting that a group within the church tried to
blackmail fellow church officials with evidence of their homosexual activities.
Italian media reported this year that the allegations contributed to Benedict's
decision to resign.
Stressing that Catholic
social teaching that calls for homosexuals to be treated with dignity and not
marginalized, Francis said it was something else entirely to conspire to use
private information for blackmail or to exert pressure.
Francis was responding
to reports that a trusted aide was involved in an alleged gay tryst a decade
ago. He said he investigated the allegations according to canon law and found
nothing to back them up. But he took journalists to task for reporting on the matter,
saying the allegations concerned matters of sin, not crimes like sexually
abusing children.
And when someone sins
and confesses, he said, God not only forgives but forgets.
"We don't have the
right to not forget," he said.
The directness of his
comments suggested that he wanted to put the matter of the monsignor behind him
as he sets about overhauling the Vatican bank and reforming the Holy See
bureaucracy.
Speaking in Italian with
occasional lapses in his native Spanish, Francis dropped a few nuggets of other
news:
— He said he was
thinking of traveling to the Holy Land next year and is considering invitations
from Sri Lanka and the Philippines as well.
— The planned Dec. 8
canonizations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII will likely be postponed —
perhaps until the weekend after Easter — because road conditions in December
would be dangerously icy for Poles traveling to the ceremony by bus.
— And he solved the
mystery that has been circulating ever since he was pictured boarding the plane
to Rio carrying his own black bag, an unusual break from Vatican protocol.
"The keys to the
atomic bomb weren't in it," Francis quipped. Rather, he said, the bag
merely contained a razor, his breviary prayer book, his agenda and a book on
St. Terese of Lisieux, to whom he is particularly devoted.
"It's normal"
to carry a bag when traveling, he said. "We have to get use to this being
normal, this normalcy of life," for a pope, he added.
Francis certainly showed
a human, normal touch during his trip to Rio, charming the masses at World
Youth Day with his decision to forgo typical Vatican security so he could to
get close to his flock. Francis traveled without the bulletproof popemobile,
using instead a simple Fiat or open-sided car.
"There wasn't a
single incident in all of Rio de Janeiro in all of these days and all of this
spontaneity," Francis said, responding to concerns raised after his car
was swarmed by an adoring mob when it took a wrong turn and got stuck in
traffic.
"I could be with
the people, embrace them and greet them — without an armored car and instead
with the security of trusting the people," he said.
He acknowledged that
there is always the chance that a "crazy" person could get to him.
But he said he preferred taking that risk than submitting to the
"craziness" of putting an armored wall between a shepherd and his flock.
Francis' news conference
was remarkable and unprecedented: Pope John Paul II used to have on-board press
conferences, but he would move about the cabin, chatting with individual
reporters so it was sometimes hit-or-miss to hear what he said and there were
often time limits. After Benedict's maiden foreign voyage, the Vatican insisted
that reporters submit questions in advance so the theologian pope could choose
the three or four he wanted to answer and prepare his answers.
For Francis, however, no
question was off the table, no small thing given that he is known to distrust
the mainstream media and had told journalists en route to Rio that he greatly
disliked giving news conferences because he found them "tiresome."
Francis spoke lovingly
of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, saying that having him living in the Vatican
"is like having a grandfather, a wise grandfather, living at home."
He said he regularly asks Benedict for advice, but dismissed suggestions that
the German pontiff was exerting any influence on his papacy.
On the contrary, Francis
said he had tried to encourage Benedict to participate more in public functions
at the Vatican and receive guests, but that he was "a man of
prudence."
In one of his most
important speeches delivered in Rio, Francis described the church in feminine
terms, saying it would be "sterile" without women. Asked what role he
foresaw, he said the church must develop a more profound role for women in the
church, though he said "the door is closed" to ordaining women to the
priesthood.
He was less charitable
with the Vatican accountant, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who has been jailed on
accusations he plotted to smuggle €20 million ($26 million) from Switzerland to
Italy and is also accused by Italian prosecutors of using his Vatican bank
account to launder money.
Francis said while
"there are saints" in the Vatican bureaucracy, Scarano wasn't among
them.
The Vatican bank, known
as the Institute for Religious Works, has been a focus of Francis' reform
efforts, and he has named a commission of inquiry to look into its activities
amid accusations from Italian prosecutors that it has been used as an offshore
tax haven to launder money.
Asked if closing the
bank was a possibility, Francis said: "I don't know how this story will
end."
"But the
characteristics of the IOR — whether it's a bank, an aid fund or whatever it is
— are transparency and honesty."
