The Daily Beast
by Barbie Latza Nadeau Jul 29, 2013
The pope’s comment that he wouldn’t ‘judge’ gay priests seemed to augur a new era of inclusiveness from the church. But it may have been just the same old doctrine with a softer tone. By Barbie Latza
Just when you thought Pope Francis didn’t have any more surprises up his sleeve, there he goes again. On the papal flight back to Rome after a raucous reception for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Francis gave an 80-minute Q&A session to journalists in which he seemed to soften the church’s stance on homosexuality in the priesthood. While stopping short of endorsing gay marriage, he did say something a pope has never said before. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” he asked. By any previous standard of measure, judging is exactly what a pope is supposed to do. Apparently not so with Pope Francis—at least for now.
It seems all the hype about the evils of homosexuality was lost during the transition between now-retired Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor. Certainly the message has been rewritten. In 2005, Benedict signed a far-reaching document banning men with “deep-rooted homosexual tendencies” from the priesthood. Francis has not exactly reversed the church’s stance, but the fact that he does not support automatically banning gays from the priestly vocation is a major step—or at least a great headline. In fact, everything Francis says and does is making news. Just four months into his pontificate, he is being touted as revolutionary and radical, shunning the lavish papal vices and rewriting the rules on how popes rule.
But those who know the church best caution that the pope’s rock-star popularity is vaguely familiar, and that four months is not long enough to make a legacy. “It reminds me of John Paul II in 1978,” says Vatican expert and National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen, who was in the press area of the papal plane when Francis came back to chat. “He was also a pope who changed the way the papacy had been run; he was on the cover of magazines; he was a revolutionary, too. But it didn’t take long to see that it was just a change in the style of delivering the message, not changing the message at all.”
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