VADUZ, Liechtenstein (LifeSiteNews) – An archbishop in Liechtenstein has shunned civil authorities within his diocese who hosted a ‘gay pride’ event ahead of a Confirmation Mass, opting not to attend the customary lunch with the mayor in protest of the pro-LGBT event.
According to a report in local newspaper Liechtensteiner Vaterland, on June 11 the municipality of Schaan played host to a ‘gay pride’ event, the first of its kind in the region. Schaan community leader Daniel Hilti, who supposedly supports “family-friendly education,” made an appearance in support of the event, delivering a speech to the gathered crowd.
The following day, on June 12, Archbishop Wolfgang Haas of Vaduz, Liechtenstein, celebrated a Confirmation Mass in the Schaan parish of St. Laurentius, after which it is customary for the prelate to dine with both the parish priest and the town mayor
However, owing to the “celebration” of “gay pride” the day before, Haas opted not to attend the traditional annual lunch, Liechtensteiner Vaterland reported. According to parish priest Father Florian Hasler, the archbishop stressed that the “divergent ideas” of “gay pride” and Christianity clash, since on the one hand “we celebrate confirmed people who consciously choose the Christian faith. On the other hand, there is a demonstration that does not correspond to the Christian faith.”
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When approached for comment, Hilti said he is “not obliged to answer” journalists’ questions.
The archbishop has been an outspoken critic of LGBT politicking in the past, recently slamming Liechtenstein’s “marriage for all” project, which seeks to impose homosexual “marriage” on the nation.
In a pastoral letter released during Lent this year, Haas said that “[f]rom the beginning, the Creator created human beings as male and female and destined them for an exclusive bond in marriage, which human beings must not separate.”
Haas emphasized that, in the modern age, “this divine order of creation is being breached in many ways and even fundamentally called into question. The attack on the marriage and family willed by God is a devilish attack on that which is based on the salvific will of the Creator and Redeemer from the very beginning and over which man has no power of disposal.”
Haas also spoke out against the Synod on Synodality, vowing that his diocese would not take part in the two-year process over concerns that the meetings would carry “the risk of becoming ideological.”
“I am of the opinion that in our small archdiocese it is possible for good reasons to refrain from carrying out such a complex and sometimes even complicated procedure,” he wrote, noting that “the close relationships in our parishes allow for quick and uncomplicated mutual contact between pastors and laity, so that an intellectual and spiritual exchange has always been, and still is, possible.”