World News

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ROME — Pope Francis on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to gay priests, allegedly repeating a highly pejorative slur in an encounter with clerics just two weeks after the Vatican issued an apology amid reports that he had used the same word in an earlier meeting with bishops.

Francis reportedly repeated the slur in a meeting with 200 priests at Rome’s Salesian Pontifical University, according to major Italian outlets.

But Francis — who famously said, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay priests shortly after becoming pope in 2013 — has also expressed caution about admitting homosexual men to seminaries.

He has essentially backed a 2005 Vatican ruling that “homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity.”

Citing sources that were present at the meeting, Corriere della Sera also quoted the pope as saying that “gay people are good guys [and] have nice paths of faith.” But if they sought the priesthood, they should be instead directed to a spiritual guide or “to some psychologist.” If they became priests, the outlet quoted the pope as saying, gay men were likely to “fail while exercising their ministry.”

Andrea Grillo, professor of sacramental theology at the Anselmianum, a pontifical university in Rome, said that “we should focus on his underlying assumption that homosexuals shouldn’t be made priests, which is the real issue here.”

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