Spain’s newly appointed cardinal to Rome has insisted homosexuality can
be cured with treatment and likened it to other “bodily deficiencies”
such as high blood pressure.The comments by Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, who was named one of 19 new cardinals by Pope Francis last week, provoked an immediate backlash in Spain.
The 84-year-old Archbishop Emeritus of Pamplona said: “Homosexuality is a deficient way of manifesting sexuality because (sexuality) has a structure and a purpose, which is procreation.”
“Homosexuality, which can’t achieve this purpose, is a failing,” he said in an interview with Malaga-based newspaper Diario Sur, published Sunday.
He went on to compare it to his own deficiency of high blood pressure. “Our bodies have many deficiencies. I have high blood pressure — a deficiency I have to correct as I can.” With this in mind he continued: “Saying homosexuals suffer a deficiency is not an insult. It’s a help because in many cases of homosexuality it is possible to recover and become normal with the right treatment.”
His comments brought swift criticism from some quarters.
Maria Gamez, the spokesman from the socialist PSOE party in Malaga said: “These are not the winds of change that seem to be blowing from the Vatican. Pope Francis himself has distanced himself from these backward, insulting and anti-constitutional theses.”