“The Pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who felt offended by the use of a term, as reported by others,” the Vatican said in a Tuesday statement.
“As he (Pope Francis) has said on several occasions, ‘in the Church there is room for everyone, everyone! No one is useless, no one is superfluous, there is room for everyone. Just as we are, everyone.’”
Seems like they’re playing it off as “grandpa had a woopsie”.
I don’t think we can know what he intended. We can make an assumption based off his past actions, and I’m inclined to believe this explanation. Italian isn’t his first language, he’s old, and I think it’s a likely explanation that he slipped up and made an old man mistake.
Nonsense. That’s like saying a Chinese person in America didn’t intend to call a queer person a fag because they didn’t know the language, slipped up and made an old man mistake.
You do not “slip up” and say bigoted things “by mistake” unless you know they’re bigoted and have said them before.
So unless you’re making the not especially credible claim that he was taught that Italian word and no one ever told him it was offensive, I think it was a terrible excuse.
And he still needs to apologize himself, not send some lackey to do it for him.
I am a Chinese American. I can’t speak for the pope (in fact I’m atheist so I could not care less about the pope). But I can tell you that many recent immigrants who speak English as a second language are very bad at nuances in English. If someone hears the word “fag” in the context of talking about gay men, they’re not all going to pick up that it’s a slur, depending on where and how they’ve heard the term. Many of them will associate fag=gay as a matter of vocabulary. And my experience is that first gen immigrants tend to ignore or avoid pop culture so their overall exposure to language trends and usage are usually poor.
Even if you’re right and this is the case about Francis, he still needs to apologize himself.
sorry, i don’t agree. you can believe what you want, however we can’t really know… and i’m not convinced.
edit: to clarify: i do believe his position about gay priests is homophobic. i just don’t believe that he intentionally meant to use a slur while discussing it, and am willing to believe the “old man slip-up” excuse. it’s hair-splitting, i know.