VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
ROME — It must be hard to be the pope sometimes. You are either damned if you do—like when he speaks his mind—or damned if you don’t, as in the latest scandal rattling the Vatican, in which Pope Francis stands accused of nixing France’s ambassadorial candidate to the Holy See because he is gay.
On Jan. 5, French President Francois Hollande offered Laurent Stefanini’s curriculum vitae to succeed former Ambassador Bruno Jouber, who has moved on to another position within the French embassy. Generally, the Vatican approves such applications within six weeks with a letter of acceptance. It traditionally refuses applicants with radio silence, which is how Stefanini’s nomination has been received. The Vatican press office has not commented on the matter.
Some Vatican watchers have called the French nomination a true test of Pope Francis’s willingness to not judge devout gays, as he so famously pronounced early in his papacy when he told journalists on the papal plane that he did not feel worthy to judge a devout priest who happened to be gay.
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