Pope Francis backs gay marriage, Ghanaian Catholic priest comments

Head of the Catholic church, Pope Francis has backed homosexualism, calling for laws to legalise their unions.

This has created a lot of controversies within the Catholic church and beyond, with some saying his comments which are opposed to his predecessors stance on the union is surprising.

He made the comments in a documentary at a film festival in Rome.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way, they are legally covered”, Francis said in the documentary, “Francesco,” which debuted at the Rome Film Festival, reiterating his view that gay people are children of God. “I stood up for that.”

According to the New York Times, many gay Catholics and their allies outside the church welcomed the Pope’s remarks, though Francis’ opposition to gay marriage within the church remained absolute.

His conservative critics within the church hierarchy, and especially in the conservative wing of the church in the United States, who have for years accused him of diluting church doctrine, saw the remarks as a reversal of church teaching.

“The Pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the longstanding teaching of the church about same-sex unions,” said Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, R.I., adding that the remarks needed to be clarified.

Commenting on the statement on Angel FM’s Anɔpa Bɔfoɔ, keenly monitored by Ghanas Online, Rev Father Ignatius James Amponsah of Akyem Ntronan in the Eastern region said the Pope is “advocating for a civil law that can legalise for a single sex union.”

Father Amponsah said even though the Pope “is the head of the entire Catholic church, this is his personal opinion but not the teaching of the church.”

“The church classifies such people as having intrinsically disordered behaviour who must be shown love and not discriminated against but not that we should promote gayism,” he said.

Father Amponsah indicated, sometimes, people say certain things to protect people due to their enthusiasm.

He added he “personally sees gayism as a human weakness which the devil is using as a weapon of mass destruction.”

“I’ll urge the world to see it as a bad attitude which must not be encouraged. This should begin from our primary schools. If this is accepted and about 90 per cent of people get involved, the human population would get extincted in the next 30-50 years”, he told Captain Smart.

Also, he indicated many people have been forced into homosexuality due to poverty because proponents of the act are very rich, and can influence a lot of things to get their agenda along.

In Ghana and Africa as a whole, gayism is a taboo but poverty has pushed people into it so we should work and get rid of poverty.

He furthered his argument by asking for “those presenting the information must be well scrutinized since it may happen that, there may be some Catholic priests who are gay and may chance upon what the Pope said to promote their agenda.”

Rev. Father Amponsah assured the Pope cannot singlehandedly impose anything on the Catholic church unless a consensus has been reached by the entire leadership.

“Before the Pope can declare that this is what the Catholic church has accepted as a law to be practised, all his council must agree with him, that is the Cardinal”, he stated.