A historic and long overdue statement from Pope Francis:
“I believe that the church not only should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended, but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having blessed many weapons.
“The Church must ask forgiveness for not behaving many times — when I say the Church, I mean Christians!”
“I repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that they must not be discriminated against, that they must be respected and accompanied pastorally.
“The problem isn’t [homosexual] orientation,” he said. “We must be like brothers and sisters.”
