Last May 2015, Pope Francis met with France's openly Gay Ambassador to the Vatican and told him that his appointment was unacceptable. In short, he should go away.
According to Le Canard Enchaine newspaper, French diplomat Laurent Stefanini met the Pope in a 15-minute private audience, and was told by the pontiff that his appointment to represent France at the Vatican was simply unacceptable. A new ambassador’s credentials are normally accepted within weeks.
France initially was adamant to force Vatican to accept their widely condemned chief of protocol to Francois Hollande, but finally abandoned last October any attempts to appoint the despicable gay Catholic diplomat as its ambassador.
Sources at the Élysée palace told French daily Libération that Hollande had given up his efforts over the appointment. "It’s dead," a source was quoted as saying.
The move comes amid certainty over Pope Francis’s stance on homosexuality. All Catholics seized on his statement early in his papacy, when he told reporters: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" It means that Catholics will tolerate the existence of gay people, but condemned all their sexual perversion.
The pontiff further bolstered conservative Catholics by meeting Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licences, on his recent US trip – Vatican later claimed the meeting should be seen as the pope showing support for her position. Earlier this month, at the start of the Vatican’s three-week summit on family issues, it sacked a priest who came out as gay.
Both Élysée and Vatican officials declined to comment on the reports.
A report in the French satirical title Le Canard Enchainé in April claimed that Francis had a "very discreet" meeting with Stefanini, in which the pontiff said his objection to the appointment was not personal but an indication of the Vatican's disapproval of France’s 2013 gay marriage law.
According to Le Canard Enchaine newspaper, French diplomat Laurent Stefanini met the Pope in a 15-minute private audience, and was told by the pontiff that his appointment to represent France at the Vatican was simply unacceptable. A new ambassador’s credentials are normally accepted within weeks.
France initially was adamant to force Vatican to accept their widely condemned chief of protocol to Francois Hollande, but finally abandoned last October any attempts to appoint the despicable gay Catholic diplomat as its ambassador.
Sources at the Élysée palace told French daily Libération that Hollande had given up his efforts over the appointment. "It’s dead," a source was quoted as saying.
The move comes amid certainty over Pope Francis’s stance on homosexuality. All Catholics seized on his statement early in his papacy, when he told reporters: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" It means that Catholics will tolerate the existence of gay people, but condemned all their sexual perversion.
The pontiff further bolstered conservative Catholics by meeting Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licences, on his recent US trip – Vatican later claimed the meeting should be seen as the pope showing support for her position. Earlier this month, at the start of the Vatican’s three-week summit on family issues, it sacked a priest who came out as gay.
Both Élysée and Vatican officials declined to comment on the reports.
A report in the French satirical title Le Canard Enchainé in April claimed that Francis had a "very discreet" meeting with Stefanini, in which the pontiff said his objection to the appointment was not personal but an indication of the Vatican's disapproval of France’s 2013 gay marriage law.