From the day he was elevated, Pope Francis seemed different from those who had headed the Catholic Church in recent times.
The compassionate leader went against 500 years of history when he said he was no one to judge gays. Centuries of Church discrimination against the community may not end overnight but the incumbent has rendered yeoman service in speaking openly about ticklish issues of sexual orientation that have caused concern in the post-modern world.
The Pope’s admission that gays could be priests provided they were celibate, like their heterosexual brethren, goes dramatically against the grain of what Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II thought on the subject. The actions of his immediate predecessors in trying to exclude men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies from continuing as priests was a reflection of the official line of the Church. The Pope’s conciliatory gesture will go down well now with a community whose least expectation is to live their lives with dignity in an open society.
For a conservative Church steeped in the orthodoxy of centuries to be able to come to terms with the changing mores would have been far too difficult if not for a Pope of this calibre having assumed office. The frank manner in which he conducted a press conference on the way back from a historic visit to trouble-torn Brazil only adds to his growing stature as the people’s Pope. The world now awaits action in another great issue concerning the Church — paedophilia.