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VATICAN CITY, June 21, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – On Saturday Pope Francis greeted Juan Carlos Cruz, an openly homosexual man whom he appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors earlier this year at the Vatican. Cruz is himself a victim of clerical sexual abuse.
“Today I thanked Pope Francis for my appointment and reaffirmed my commitment to continue helping survivors of sexual abuse around the world,” said Cruz in a Tweet on Saturday.
Hoy agradecí al Papa Francisco mi nombramiento y reafirmé mi compromiso para seguir ayudando a sobrevivientes de abuso sexual en el mundo. Today I thanked Pope Francis for my appointment and reaffirmed my commitment to keep helping survivors all over the world. pic.twitter.com/DwU5OpLlWC
— Juan Carlos Cruz Ch. (@jccruzchellew) June 19, 2021
In 2018, Pope Francis told Cruz, “God made you gay,” suggesting to the world that the Church is treading down a path to justifying LGBT identity and activity as fully normal, despite the fact that such a path would be impossible for the Church of Christ.
The Vatican press office's Cristina Ravenda told LifeSiteNews at the time, “The Vatican does not comment on private conversations of the Pope.” Pope Francis could have personally issued a correction to the story, but a correction never came.
Pope Francis’ long history of mixed signals regarding homosexuality and transgenderism
Pope Francis has repeatedly delivered mixed signals, often seeming to significantly depart from Church teaching regarding the pastoring of individuals afflicted with homosexuality and transgenderism.
Over the course of his pontificate, Pope Francis has given indications that he is not concerned with addressing homosexual activity according to Church teaching as inherently disordered and intrinsically evil. In the last few years, he has signalled support for legal recognition of same-sex unions; welcomed a former male student and his boyfriend to the Vatican’s U.S. embassy; and a French priest said in a televised interview that Pope Francis approved of his blessing of homosexual couples.
In 2013, the premiere LGBT publication, The Advocate, named Pope Francis “Person of the Year,” for asking, “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with goodwill, who am I to judge?”
The Advocate editor’s explanation of their choice reveals the consequences of Pope Francis’s words:
The most influential person of 2013 doesn't come from our ongoing legal conflict but instead from our spiritual one — successes from which are harder to define. There has not been any vote cast or ruling issued, and still a significant and unprecedented shift took place this year in how LGBT people are considered by one of the world's largest faith communities.
In 2017, the LGBT world applauded Pope Francis’s recruitment of fellow Jesuit, pro-LGBT Father James Martin, as a communications consultant to the Holy See’s Secretariat for Communications. Martin has led the charge to normalize homosexuality and trangenderism within the Catholic Church virtually unhindered.
In a widely publicized event two years later, Martin joined Pope Francis at the Vatican for a private meeting, bolstering the credibility of Martin’s pro-LGBT advocacy.
The private audience took place for over 30 minutes in the papal library of the Apostolic Palace. America magazine interpreted the meeting as a “highly significant public statement of support and encouragement” for the American Jesuit. Martin himself saw it as “a sign of the Holy Father’s care for L.G.B.T. people.”
In 2016, Pope Francis referred to a woman who had undergone a sex-change operation as a “man,” and also referred to her as having “married” another woman and admitted to receiving them in the Vatican.
Referring to the post-trans surgery woman, Pope Francis said, “He got married.”
“He that was ‘her’ but is he,” explained Pope Francis.
In January 2020, an “out” gay priest, Father James Alison, who rejects the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, shared his personal reaction to a phone call he claims he received from Pope Francis in which the Pontiff reportedly affirmed him as a homosexual priest.
In August 2020, after a controversial nun opened a residence in Argentina for “trans women” –men who choose to identify as women – Pope Francis praised her work, referring to the men as “girls.”
“Dear Monica, God who did not go to the seminary or study theology will repay you abundantly. I pray for you and your girls,” said the Pope, according to the nun, Sister Mónica Astorga Cremona.
Then one month later, Pope Francis again implicitly affirmed the notion that God purposefully makes people same-sex attracted and gender dysphoric, telling a group of Italian parents who affirm their children as LGBT that “God loves your children as they are.”
Pope Francis met with the group of 40 parents, members of Tenda di Gionata, “Jonathan’s Tent,” following a public audience, according to a report by America magazine. Homosexual activists have long co-opted the Biblical story of the relationship of bosom friendship that existed between David and Jonathan to serve their homosexual agenda.
Mara Grassi, vice president of the Tenda di Gionata, told Pope Francis, “We wish to create a bridge to the church so that the church too can change its way of looking at our children, no longer excluding them but fully welcoming them.”