Pope Francis allegedly told Italian bishops to not permit gay men to train for the priesthood, with two Italian newspapers claiming that the 87-year-old pontiff made a homophobic slur in a closed-door meeting last week. Citing sources from inside the meeting, the Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica newspapers reported Monday that the Pope had made the comments while meeting with Italian bishops on May 20. The remarks took place in the context of proposals from the Italian bishops to amend guidelines on candidates to seminaries. The newspaper articles, which were translated from Italian, claimed the Pope had used an offensive noun which translates into English approximately as “f*****ry, to describe some of the seminaries. The Vatican ruled in 2005 that the church cannot allow the ordination of men who are actively gay or have “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies. In 2016, Francis upheld this ruling. Two years later he told the…
