The LGBT community is cheering Pope Francis’ alleged remarks regarding the nature of homosexuality. Juan Carlos Cruz, a whistleblower in Chile’s clerical sex abuse scandal, says the pontiff told him, “God made you this way.”
Cruz met with the pope on Monday at the Vatican. “He said, ‘Look Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you,'” Cruz told the Associated Press.
The Vatican has yet to confirm or deny the comments, which were first reported by a Spanish newspaper.
But are the comments a contradiction to Catholic teachings? Not really.
The Church teaches that the action of homosexuality is sinful and “intrinsically disordered,” but that gays and lesbians are children of God and should be loved and respected. This is largely misconstrued by those hostile to the Christian faith.
And with regard to the innate nature of homosexuality, the Church acknowledges that this is a “trial” for most, implying at least some level of a strong internal struggle.
“The first edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the dense summary of Catholic teaching published by St. John Paul II in 1992, said gay individuals ‘do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial,'” reports The Chicago Tribune. Though, the current Catechism is less explicit: “This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial,” reads the revised version.