Vatican under fire for linking gays to paedophilia

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone answers a question during a news conference in Santiago. - Reuters pic

VATICAN CITY, April 14 — Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict’s number two today for calling homosexuality a “pathology” and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children.

The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers today.

The French foreign ministry and in some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal’s remarks.

As the scandal over sexual abuse of children by priests has spread, some in the Catholic Church have called for a review of the Church’s rule that prohibits priests from marrying, saying marriage would allow priests to enjoy a healthy sex life.

Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, who is sometimes called the “deputy pope,” told a news conference in Santiago on Monday:

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia.”

“This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” he said. “The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous.”

Gay rights activists reacted with derision and outrage.

“This is a scientific absurdity. The World Health Organisation calls homosexuality a variation of human behaviour. It is paedopholia that is a pathology, a crime, not homosexuality,” said Franco Grillini, a former parliamentarian who was at the vanguard of Italy’s gay rights movement.

“Because they have their own problems with the abuse crisis and don’t know how to handle it, they are trying to pass their ‘cross’ from their shoulders on to ours,” Grillini told Reuters.

The French foreign ministry called it an “unacceptable linkage that we condemn”.

Some pro-Vatican Catholic blogs said more controversy was the last thing the Vatican needed.

“Paedophilia and homosexuality: Bertone trips up — again — on gays,” read a post in the Italian-language “Blog of the Friends of Pope Ratzinger.”

It said the pope might now have to “clean up the mess made by his right-hand man”.

A front-page editorial in Rome’s left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper titled “The Confusion in the Church” said Bertone’s comments would end up causing the Church more “harm to itself, not homosexuals”.

Bertone was also criticised by Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing parliamentarian whose grandfather, wartime Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, sent gays into internal exile.

“You can’t link sexual orientation to paedophilia ... this link risks becoming dangerously misleading for the protection of children,” Mussolini said.