Raul Vera Lopez, the Catholic bishop of
Saltillo, Mexico, has criticized homophobes, calling them “sick.”
Vera, a vocal gay rights supporter, was
asked in an interview with El
Pais: “Not long ago you baptized the daughter of a lesbian
couple. What do you think about homosexuality?”
“That is a topic that we have refused
to address,” Vera responded. “The people who say homosexuals are
sick are sick themselves. The church needs to come to them not with
condemnation but with dialogue. We cannot cancel out a person's
richness just because of his or her sexual preference.”
“That is sick. That is heartless.
That is lacking common sense,” he added.
In 2011, the Vatican summoned Vera to
Rome to inquire about a gay-inclusive group of Catholics headed by
Noe Ruiz.
Vera publicly affiliated his diocese
with the group and sponsored its film festivals, which led to harsh
criticism from the Peru-based Catholic news agency ACI Prensa.
When he returned, Vera said that
Vatican officials simply made observations about his work, but the
bishop did not elaborate. He vowed to continue his outreach to the
LGBT community.
“I will not abandon these children,”
he said at the time of children with gay parents. “We cannot
abandon people who depend on us.”
“For a long time, Raul Vera was the
Catholic Church's black sheep,” El Pais wrote, “the
old-fashioned left-winger. But that was until the ideological
earthquake represented by the new pope, Francis I, gave renewed
relevance to his words. Now, other bishops are suddenly turning to
Vera for guidance.”