By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Nearly 100 homosexual activists and the media gathered outside St. Peter’s Square in Rome on Saturday, claiming the Catholic Church as an unspoken agenda to “kill” homosexuals.
The purpose of the protest, which was organized by the leading homosexual activist organization in Italy, Arcigay, was staged in response to the position taken by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s envoy to the United Nations, not to support a UN resolution to “decriminalize homosexuality.”
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, told a French news agency last week that the Vatican opposes the declaration because it would place even more pressure on countries to adopt or expand same-sex “marriage” or unions and would generally fuel the movement to normalize homosexuality.
“States which do not recognise same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” he said.
Since then, socially liberal forces in Italy have responded to Migliore’s comments with protests and accusations that the Vatican has a murderous “secret agenda.”
A spokesman for Arcigay’s Saturday protest told LifeSiteNews that “What they say are three things. That it is normal to kill a homosexual. It is normal to kill a lesbian. It is normal to kill transsexual.”
When asked how he came to believe that the Vatican wants to “kill homosexuals” the Arcigay spokesman said only, “The United Nations has to take a position, and to take over, to remove all the laws in the world against the homosexuals.”
However, Archbishop Migliore never said any such thing. He reiterated the teaching of the Church which states that all unjust forms of discrimination towards persons with homosexual inclinations must be avoided, then defended the rights of countries who want to retain legal recognition of natural sexual relations. “If adopted,” he said, the UN resolution “would create new and implacable discriminations.”
Other protesters said the Vatican has “always” wanted to kill homosexuals. One said, “The Church wants the gays killed.” When asked for evidence, within the last fifty years, that the Catholic Church or the pope wants to kill homosexuals, the spokesman said, “It’s really hard to answer this question. The Church is in fact against gays. Their actions don’t correspond to their words.”
Vatican media spokesman and director of Vatican Radio, Fr. Frederico Lombardi, called the accusations “absurd.”
“No one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals,” Fr. Lombardi said. “It’s not for nothing that fewer than 50 member states of the United Nations have adhered to the proposal in question while more than 150 have not adhered. The Holy See is not alone,” he said.
A few days before the protest, the former head of the Vatican’s Academy for Life, Msgr Elio Sgreccia, told ANSA on Wednesday that the Church would not waiver on ”its values, whether these are in harmony with society’s trends or not”.
Sgreccia stressed that the Vatican’s ”no was in fact a yes for the family.”
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