Catholic Church should apologize to gays, says papal adviser Cardinal Marx
One of Pope Francis’ leading advisors has declared that the Catholic Church should publicly apologize to homosexuals for what he called its scandalous and terrible treatment of them.
The comments by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of the council of nine cardinals chosen by Pope Francis to advise him, were reported in the Irish Times June 23.
“The history of homosexuals in our societies is very bad because we’ve done a lot to marginalize [them],” he said, adding that as a Church and as a society “we’ve also to say ‘sorry, sorry.’”
The Cardinal, who is the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, said that up until “very recently” the Catholic Church had been “very negative about gay people,” adding that “it was a scandal and terrible.”
It was almost three years ago when Pope Francis uttered his famous statement “Who am I to judge” regarding homosexuality that signified to many a new direction they thought the Pope intended to move the Church on the topics of marriage and sexuality.
Cardinal Marx suggested in the interview that the Church ought to look favorably on same-sex relationships, but would not go as far as calling those relationships “marriage.”
“We have to respect the decisions of people. We have to respect also, as I said in the first synod on the family — some were shocked, but I think it’s normal — you cannot say that a relationship between a man and a man, and they are faithful, [that] that is nothing, that has no worth,” he said.
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