Pope Benedict XVI named Bishop Jean-Louis Brugues of Angers, France, a moral theologian, to be the new secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.The prelate, who will turn 64 Nov. 22, also was promoted to the rank of archbishop Nov. 10.
He succeeds Archbishop J. Michael Miller, who was named coadjutor archbishop of Vancouver, British Columbia, in June.Archbishop Brugues was a long-serving member of the International Theological Commission, a group that advises the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
While a commission member, he wrote one of the 1997 articles for a Vatican newspaper series on Christian anthropology and homosexuality.
Nothing in church teaching suggests that gays and lesbians are cut off from salvation, but they must refrain from sexual activity, just as heterosexual singles must, he wrote.
"God loves us as we are with our limitations, our particularities and our wounds, which can become ways to sanctification," he wrote in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
Because sexual activity is morally licit only within the context of marriage between a man and a woman, he said, gays and lesbians "need to experience profoundly the virtue of friendship" without sexual activity.
Conversion and perfect chastity are options available to everyone, and the church's pastoral workers must encourage gays and other unmarried Catholics to live their Christianity fully, he said.
The archbishop studied economics and law before entering the Dominican order in France.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1975 and earned a doctorate in theology from the Institut Catholique in Toulouse.
Pope John Paul II named him bishop of Angers in 2000.
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