Pope Francis, the leader of over1 billion Roman Catholics
worldwide, on Thursday said that the church needs to be a more
welcoming place for all.
According
to the AP, Francis was talking about the church's rules about
abortion, gays and contraception when he said: “The church's
pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a
disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. We have
to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church
is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and
fragrance of the Gospel.”
“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in
small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first
proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the
church must be ministers of mercy above all,” the Holy Father said
in a wide-ranging interview with the Italian Jesuit magazine La
Civilta Cattolica.
While Francis said that church doctrine on abortion, gay nuptials
and contraception was clear and that he was a “son of the church,”
he added that “it is not necessary to talk about these issues all
the time.”
The pope also addressed his previous remarks about gay priests.
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good
will, who am I to judge? Francis rhetorically asked reporters aboard
the papal aircraft on the journey back to the Vatican from his first
foreign trip to Brazil.
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approve
of homosexuality,” Francis said in the interview. “I replied
with another question: 'Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does
he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and
condemn this person?'”
“We must always consider the person,” he continued. “In
life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting
from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with
mercy.”
He added that the church should be “the home of all, not a small
chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people.”