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Gay news: French government: 'This is an unacceptable linkage and we condemn it'
Cardinal Bertone
France joins UK bishops in condemning Vatican's homosexuality abuse link
The French foreign ministry and all 32 Catholic bishops in England and Wales have condemned a senior cardinal's claim that homosexuality was linked with paedophilia.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, was reportedly attempting to defuse the sex abuse scandals currently rife in the Catholic church when he said on Monday that homosexuality and not clerical celibacy was to blame.
He had said: "Many psychologists, many psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have demonstrated, I was told recently, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. I have the documents of the psychologists. That is the problem."
But on Wednesday, the French government, speaking for a country where an estimated 60% of the population are Catholic, condemned Bertone's statement.
Reported by BBC News, foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said: "This is an unacceptable linkage and we condemn this. France is firmly engaged in the struggle against discrimination and prejudice linked to sexual orientation and gender identity."
Another rebuttal came from the Rev Fr Marcus Stock, general secretary to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, who issued a statement carrying the authority and approval of all 32 Catholic bishops in England and Wales.
He said: "To the best of my knowledge, there is no empirical data which concludes that sexual orientation is connected
to child sexual abuse.
"The consensus among researchers is that the sexual abuse of children is not a question of sexual orientation, whether heterosexual or homosexual, but of a disordered mind or fixation. Many abusers of children have never developed the capacity for mature adult relationships."
In Italy, Bertone's statement has been seen in some quarters as a symptom of an embattled church's inability to deal with the worldwide sex abuse scandal.
Gay rights activist Aurelio Mancuso accused the cardinal of "clumsily trying to shift attention to homosexuality and away from the focus on new crimes against children that emerge every day".
In the press, La Repubblica described the attempt to link homosexuality with paedophilia as a "dramatic confession of weakness [betraying] the confused state in which the Catholic church now finds itself".
