WHAT’S THE STORY?

A FORMER high-ranking Vatican priest, sacked after revealing he was in a relationship with another man, has launched an angry tirade against the Roman Catholic Church.

Krzysztof Charamsa claims the clergy is “full of homosexuals” yet the Church makes the lives of millions of gay Catholics across the world “hell”. In a letter to Pope Francis, he accuses the church of “persecuting” and causing “immeasurable suffering” to homosexual Catholics and their families.

The 43 year-old says his decision to publicly reject the “violence of the Church towards homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and inter-sexual people” was taken after a “long and tormented period of discernment and prayer”.

Charamsa is calling for the annulment of a document banning men with “strong homosexual tendencies” from becoming priests. The document was signed by the current Pope’s predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in 2005. Charamsa said Pope Benedict’s view that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil” was “diabolical”.

The contents of the letter, which also condemns the Vatican for leaning heavily on states and countries that allow same-sex marriage, were revealed yesterday.

Written on October 3, when he announced he was in a gay relationship, the letter states that LGBT Catholics have a right to family life “even if the Church does not want to bless it”.

Charamsa was immediately sacked from his senior post at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department supposed to protect and promote the church’s stance on morals.

INHUMAN SOLUTION

Born in Poland in 1972, Charamsa was ordained to the priesthood in 1997 after studying theology and philosophy in Pelplin in Poland from 1991-93 and then at Switzerland’s University of Lugano from 1993-97.

His aptitude for theology led him to study for a doctorate at the Pontifical Gregorian University and he was appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2003 but now says he struggled to rationalise the church’s stance on homosexuality and believes Pope Benedict’s reaffirmation of the church’s opposition to gay priests was akin to a “racist judgment”.

Charamsa remains a priest for the moment but was immediately sacked from his Vatican post, with the Church’s hierarchy furious at the timing of his announcement – the day before a key, three-week-long Synod on the Family.

Posing for pictures with his Catalan boyfriend, Charamsa said he was both proud and happy to be a gay priest. The story made headlines around the world, sparking fury at the Vatican.

“The decision to make such a pointed statement on the eve of the opening of the Synod appears very serious and irresponsible, since it aims to subject the Synod assembly to undue media pressure,” said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

In turn, Charamsa – forced to abandon plans to hold his press conference outside the Doctrine of the Faith’s offices – denied the timing of the announcement was to put pressure on the Synod debates. He said he had decided to come out as gay after he was sent hate mail following his public criticism of a right-wing priest’s homophobic statements.

“It’s time for the Church to open its eyes about gay Catholics and to understand that the solution it proposes to them – total abstinence from a life of love – is inhuman,” he said. “I know that I will have to give up my ministry which is my whole life.

“I know that the Church will see me as someone who did not know how to fulfil his duty [to remain chaste], who is lost and who is not even with a woman but with a man.”

PARANOID POSITION

While homosexuality was only a small part of the Synod’s agenda it dominated publicity in the run-up to the meeting following controversy over Pope Francis’s recent meeting in the US with one of his former students, who is gay.

In his letter to the Pope, Charamsa thanks him for his apparent tolerance of homosexuals but adds that the Church is “locked in a paranoid position against the Pope”.

“I think Pope Francis has a conviction that he has opposition so great that this is not for this moment,” he said this week.

“We [in the church] are incapable of knowing one another. Of dialogue. It is like a mental dictatorship. I’m from Poland. I knew the Communist system, it is irrational, without argument.”

In Poland, he said the church was seen as an escape from Communism, a place where “freedom is possible”.

“So the church was this space where you can realise yourself and your nation and your desire for freedom. But at the same time, there are homophobic actions and mentality. [The church says] that to be gay is ill, that it is horrible, that it is something from hell, not from this world, something contrary to the nature and to God – and this is God who you love,” he said.

“I am not a paedophile. I am a healthy homosexual man. I am not a monster. I am not bestial. I am a minority, but I have my dignity and this must be approved by my church.”

Charamsa has spoken of his desire to marry.

“For me, [marriage] is part of the dynamic of love and I thank God that I live in a century where it’s possible, thanks to the homosexual movement and thanks to many homosexual martyrs.

“The homosexual possibility of marriage in our century is very important for the perception of marriage. It helps to explain that essential in marriage is love,” he says. “You can say ‘no, it is to produce babies’. But I think it must begin with love and then we can speak of life, of children. I think homosexual people are prophetic.”

If Charamsa did time his announcement to try to influence the Synod to tone down its stance on homosexuality then he was unsuccessful.

When the meetings concluded at the weekend, the bishops made clear they believed there was no foundation for same-sex marriage within the Roman Catholic Church.

However Charamsa maintains there was “never a good time” to come out but said his partner had helped him.

“He was capable of helping and offering his life for this traumatic passage, for this decision which existentially for priests is like going away from prison. Like Guantánamo.”