'Who am I to judge?' Pope Francis refuses to condemn gay priests and says their sins should be forgiven and forgotten

Pope Francis yesterday signalled  a more tolerant era of Vatican thinking after he spoke out in defence of homosexuals.
In remarks at odds with traditional rhetoric, the Pontiff refused to condemn homosexuality, saying: ‘We must  be brothers.’
In the most conciliatory words yet from the Vatican on the subject of gay priests, he added: ‘If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?’
The new Pope used a talk with journalists covering his visit to Brazil to emphasise Roman Catholic teaching that says  those who have gay orientation should  be accepted.

Conciliatory: Pope Francis during a press conference on the flight back to Italy after departure from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where he signalled a dramatic turnaround in the Catholic church's approach to gay priests

Massive: More than three million people were estimated to have gathered for the farewell Mass

He stressed that the official position of the Church is that homosexual acts are sinful, but homosexual urges and thoughts are not.
The message that gay people should be ‘integrated’ into society rather than marginalised marks a clear departure for the Papacy.
In recent years the pronouncements of Francis’s predecessor Pope Benedict have fiercely condemned gay rights and at one point the former Pope described gay relationships as ‘evil’.
Speaking on his flight back to Rome from Rio, the Pontiff saved his criticism for gay pressure groups and lobbies. ‘The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well,’ he said.
‘It says they should not be marginalised because of this orientation but that they must be integrated into society.
‘The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem.’

‘But with regard to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says no. ‘Pope John Paul said so with a formula that was definitive.’
The change of tone from the Vatican on homosexuality comes three weeks after the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, said in a key speech on gay rights that criticism of the Church of England’s attitudes may be  justified and ‘pretending that  nothing has changed is absurd  and impossible’.
Archbishop Welby told Anglicans that the Parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage showed the Church was out of touch with majority thinking.
He told General Synod that ‘the cultural and political ground is changing. Anyone who listened to the Same Sex Marriage Bill second reading debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland. Predictable attitudes were no longer there.’
He added: ‘We may or may not like it but we must accept there is a revolution in the area of sexuality