ITALY
Telegraph
By Nick Squires, Rome 05 Oct 2015
A row over the Vatican’s attitude towards gay priests has been stoked further by a claim that priests with “homosexual tendencies” are packed off to a religious retreat in order to be “cured”.
The Holy See had already been embarrassed by a senior Vatican official’s decision to come out publicly as gay at the weekend, just as 270 bishops from around the world gathered in Rome to attend a synod on family issues.
Krzysztof Charamsa, 43, a Polish priest and theologian who worked in one of the Vatican’s most influential departments, was summarily sacked after criticising what he called “institutionalised homophobia in the Church” and claiming that a majority of priests were gay.
As angry Vatican officials called his provocative gesture “very serious and irresponsible”, it was claimed on Monday that priests suspected of being gay are often sent to a convent in the northern city of Trento in order to “reflect” on their futures.
The Trento convent’s role in trying to “cure” priests of homosexuality was revealed by a former priest who was thrown out of the Church three years ago for being gay.
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