Cardinal Antonio Canizares
The Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Antonio Canizares, is being charged with hate crimes after giving a homily in which he spoke out about gays, radical feminism and Europe’s open-door policy toward migrants.
Breitbart is reporting on the homily given by the Cardinal on May 13, on the eve of the International Day Against Lesbophobia, Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
“The family is haunted today, in our culture, by an endless threat of serious difficulties, and this is not hidden from anyone,” Cañizares said at a Mass celebrated in the chapel at the Catholic University of Valencia. “We have legislation contrary to the family, the action of political and social forces, with added movements and actions of the gay empire, of ideas such as radical feminism, or the most insidious of all, gender theory.”.
In response to the homily, the Lambda LGBT collective filed a criminal complaint on June 3 accusing the Cardinal of hate speech. Canizares offered an apology for offending anyone but Lambda was not appeased. Instead, they attacked the Cardinal, accusing him of using words that are “full of hatred, homophobic and sexist, and only incite hatred against those who do not enter fit into the archaic models defended by the Catholic hierarchy.”
Since then, more than 55 pro-LGBT groups have joined in the complaint, including the Communist Party of Valencia.
According to Crux, Fani Boronat, coordinator of Lambda, now say that what they want from the Cardinal is for him to offer a different homily in which he makes a “strong” declaration in favor of the LGBT community, supporting diversity, equality, and feminism.
Of course, the Cardinal has no intention of doing this and has since met with Pope Francis who urged him to stand firm in his positions.
In the meantime, the cardinal issued an open letter asking for “objective” lawyers and jurists to read the full homily in which he delivered the controversial remarks, and to point out what part of his text broke the law.
He is also calling upon Christians in Valencia to refuse to comply with a bill that would allow minors to have a gender reorientation surgery, financed by the state, even without their parents’ consent (which under the law they would still need, for instance, to get a tattoo), Crux reports.
As expected, the case has renewed debate in Spain concerning the protection of free speech, a right that was severely eroded last year when the Spanish Senate enacted controversial changes in the nation’s public security laws which many see as suppression of the rights of freedom of assembly and expression.
At the time, Virginia Pérez Alonso of the Platform in Defense of Freedom of Information called the legislation “one of the worst attacks on liberties that we’ve seen in Spain since the times of Franco.”
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