The Vatican has distanced itself from comments by Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone linking paedophilia to homosexuality. ”Church authorities do not deem it part of their responsibility to make general assertions of a specifically psychological or medical nature,” the Vatican said in a statement yesterday, The Age reports.
Cardinal Bertone had claimed that the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis was linked to homosexuality and paedophilia and not celibacy among priests.
Cardinal Bertone, who is considered Pope Benedict’s number two, sparked the controversy on a visit to Chile.
”Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and paedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and paedophilia,” Cardinal Bertone said.
”That is true. That is the problem.”
The cardinal also insisted that the church has never stymied investigation of priests accused of paedophilia.
The comments prompted widespread outrage.
”This is an unacceptable linkage and we condemn this,” France’s foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said yesterday.
Homosexual associations in Italy reacted with anger and indignation.
The president of the gay media service Gaynet said that if senior church officials ”feel constrained to dump the blame on homosexuals, it says a lot about the current state of desperation in the Vatican”.
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