IRELAND
Irish Times
Mark Hennessy, Patsy McGarry
Former president Mary McAleese, who has urged a Scottish cardinal forced to stand down last year to admit publicly that he is gay, has said “a very large number” of Catholic priests are homosexuals.
The Catholic Church has been in denial over homosexuality for decades, particularly since many priests are gay, she said. “It isn’t so much the elephant in the room but a herd of elephants.
“I don’t like my church’s attitude to gay people. I don’t like ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’. If you are the so-called sinner, who likes to be called that? We also know that within the priesthood a very large number of priests are gay.”
She also criticised words attributed to the previous Pope on this subject as being contradictory. “Things written by [Pope] Benedict, for example, were completely contradictory to modern science and to modern understanding, and to the understanding of most Catholics nowadays in relation to homosexuality.
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