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Gay News: The leader of Belgium's Catholic Church has said that AIDS is justly deserved.
By: Nigel Robinson
Archbishop Leonard
Archbishop Leonard
Archbishop says gays deserve AIDS
4 November 2010
André-Joseph Léonard, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussells, and Primate of the Catholic church in Belgium, has been accused of homophobia after he said that being gay was a travesty of nature, and described AIDS as “a sort of intrinsic justice”.
The Archbishop also said that retired priests who had been found guilty of child abuse should be spared legal action, as this would be “a sort of vengeance” and would have no concrete result.
The Archbishop denied that he was stigmatising HIV carriers, but in a book published month he wrote: “When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in return. And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance.
“All I’m saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions… This [AIDS] epidemic is a sort of intrinsic justice.”
Some members of the Catholic Church in Belgium have sought to distance themselves from their Archbishop’s remarks.
Jürgen Mettepenningen, the Archbishop’s press spokesman, resigned his post on Tuesday 2 November, only three month’s after joining the Archbishop’s office.
“Monsignor Leonard at times acts like a motorist driving on the wrong way of a freeway who thinks all the other motorists are wrong,” he said at a press conference
A petition has been launched at the Catholic university of Louvain to remove the Archbishop from his post as Chancellor, and gay rights lawyer, Jean-Marie De Meester, has launched legal action against the Archbishop for homophobia.
“I believe that the Archbishop is violating anti-discrimination law and committing slander,” he said.
In a 2007 interview the Archbishop, who is close to the Pope, said that homosexuals were “abnormal”, although he later claimed that it was the act of homosexuality he was referring to, rather than the person.
