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VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis is a pope of many firsts: The first to use that name, the first from Latin America, the first from the Jesuit religious order. Since last week, he’s also the first pope to apologise for using foul language.
Pope Francis was quoted by Italian media as using the Italian term “frociaggine”, roughly translating as “faggotness” or “faggotry”, in a closed-door May 20 meeting with Italian bishops.
The Vatican issued an apology, but after that, other Italian reports attributed more gay slurs to the pope, as well as chauvinist language associating women with gossip, in a separate meeting with Roman priests.
Friends of the pontiff and top Vatican watchers insist that what has possibly been the biggest PR disaster of his 11-year papacy should not obscure his record as a reforming, LGBT-friendly pope.
However, some say the 87-year-old’s gaffe fits into a pattern of papal missteps that undermine his authority and raise questions about his convictions and the reform path he has in mind for the Church.
“Anyone who has been online … has seen the pope reduced to a meme, a social media tool for anyone to make jokes about, some very funny, some in very poor taste,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University.
“The word of a pope should carry some weight, some credibility. Whether or not you agree with him, you’d normally think that what he says is thought through … Now it is a bit more difficult (to think that),” he said.
SALTY TONGUE
Pope Francis has a reputation for having a salty tongue, especially in private, so while the reported anti-gay slurs shocked many, they did not seem out of character to people who know him.
“I’m obviously not justifying his use of an offensive term … but it is normal for him in private to speak very, very directly,” papal biographer Austen Ivereigh said. “He doesn’t talk like a politician.”
A personal friend of the pope – a gay Argentine man who has known him for more than 30 years and asked not to be named – said that Pope Francis knows he has a problem with foul language.
“He calls himself a ‘bocon’, which kind of translates (from Spanish) into someone who can’t keep his mouth shut,” the man told Reuters. “He has never been diplomatic. I am actually surprised something like this didn’t happen earlier.”
When Pope Francis went to Ireland in the 1980s to try to learn English, the friend recalled, “his teachers were horrified by the way in the classroom he would use English swear words he had picked up”.
The same source said Pope Francis had come “a long way in terms of openness towards LGBT rights” for a man of his generation, noting he grew up in a very conservative family that considered divorcees – let alone gay people – social pariahs.
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