(ZENIT News / Rome, 27.05.2024).- Pope Francis confirmed Benedict XVI who said “no” to homosexuals in the Seminaries. He did so during a closed-door meeting with the Italian Episcopate.
The Italian Episcopate held its General Assembly in the Vatican from May 20-23. On Monday afternoon, May 20, shortly before 4:00 pm, the Holy Father met with the Italian Bishops for an hour and a half.
In a dynamic of questions and answers, the Bishops talked with the Pope on migration, antisemitism, unification of dioceses (which might not happen). Two other topics addressed were vocations and the accompaniment of priests.
At a certain point, speaking of vocations, Pope Francis said to the Bishops: “there is too much sexual activity in the Church.” Some of the media added — not to be forgotten is that the meeting was held behind closed doors — that the Pope asked that homosexual seminarians be thrown out of the Seminaries. And he asked that what Benedict XVI requested be followed (in fact, the then Congregation for Catholic Education did so in 2005 with the document: “Instruction on the Criteria of Vocational Discernment, in Relation to Persons of Homosexual Tendencies Before Their Admission to the Seminary and Holy Orders.”
According to the Italian press, in the Italian Episcopate’s previous General Assembly, held in Assisi in November 2023, the Bishops discussed the possibility of softening the restrictions to homosexual men in the Seminaries, given that both for heterosexual men as well as the homosexual, celibacy was prescriptive. Given that the expression used by the Pope in Italian (“frociaggine”) would have a derogatory meaning, some Bishops mentioned –requesting that their identity not be revealed — that the Pope did not use the term in a pejorative sense.
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