Cardinal Tipped to Become First Black Pope in Modern Times ...

By Simon Caldwell
Daily Mail
February 20, 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281411/Cardinal-Peter-Turkson-blames-gay-priests-abuse-scandals-facing-Catholic-church.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Storm: Cardinal Peter Turkson has faced a backlash after blaming gay priests for the clerical abuse crisis

The African cardinal widely tipped to be the first black pope in modern history faced a firestorm of criticism last night after he laid the blame for clerical sex abuse crises at the feet of gay priests.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, who comes from Ghana, told an American journalist that similar sex scandals would never convulse churches in Africa because the culture was inimical to homosexuality.

‘African traditional systems kind of protect or have protected its population against this tendency,’ he told Christiane Amanpour of CCN.

‘Because in several communities, in several cultures in Africa homosexuality or for that matter any affair between two sexes of the same kind, are not countenanced in our society,’ he continued.

‘So that cultural taboo, that tradition has been there,’ said Cardinal Turkson, 64. ‘It has served to keep it out.’

As the head of a major Vatican department – the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace - Cardinal Turkson is ranked as the 5/2 second favourite to take the papal crown when a Conclave of Cardinals meets next month to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his abdication last week on the grounds of ill health

Catholics throughout the African continent and the developing world are praying that he will be chosen ahead of the Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Archbishop of Milan, who Paddy Power has made its 9/4 favourite.

But his public comments blaming homosexual priests in for the sexual abuse of many hundreds of children in Europe, the United States and Australia mean his election would be severely criticised in the West.