World
Fmr. Vatican ambassador: Ukraine’s Zelensky promotes LGBTQ ideology
Vigano alleges that Zelensky promulgates policies to embrace, including gender equality, abortion and the green economy
ROME – Italian Catholic-Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s former papal nuncio to the United States, in an over 10,000 word essay published Monday, accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of catering to a “reform” agenda and using his presidency to promote “LGBTQ ideology.”
Vigano also took the Ukrainian leader to task alleging that Zelensky promulgates policies to embrace, including gender equality, abortion and the green economy. The prelate then categorized the acceptance of LGBTQ people as a leading cause for the invasion by Russia along with rhetoric echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for attacking Ukraine.
The Archbishop writes that the Ukrainian President was a mediocre actor and comedian who rose to power as he blamed “deep state” forces in the United States, the European Union and NATO for triggering the current war and demonizing Russia.
Vigano claims that “Neo-Nazi movements engaged in military and paramilitary actions operate freely in Ukraine, often with the official support of public institutions.” This echoing the lies of the Russian President who invoked World War II to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying in televised remarks last week that his offensive aimed to “denazify” the country — whose democratically elected president is Jewish, and lost relatives in the Holocaust, NPR reported.
“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime,” Russian President Putin said, according to an English translation from the Russian Mission in Geneva. “To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”
The Archbishop’s essay mounting a defense of Russia’s invasion followed Patriarch Kirill the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an ally of Putin, who repeated a long-held contention that the West wants to enforce the practice of holding gay pride parades as a test of loyalty to its values, which include the acceptance of homosexuality. The Ukraine war, he said Sunday in his sermon, resulted from the eastern regions’ refusal to acquiesce.
“If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, then human civilization will end there,” Kirill said on the pre-Lenten celebration known as Forgiveness Sunday.
Viganò’s letter portrayed the Ukrainian leader as an E.U. puppet;
“The image of Zelenskyy is an artificial product, a mediatic fiction, an operation to manipulate consensus that was nonetheless able to create a political character in the Ukrainian collective imagination and who in reality, not in fiction, was able to seize power,” the Archbishop wrote of the Ukrainian president.
Vigano was forced to resign after he arranged Pope Francis’ controversial 2015 meeting with Kim Davis, the Rowan County Kentucky clerk who went to jail rather than comply with a court order to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
A New York Times story reported the backstory behind some of the later Vatican drama after the Pope was informed as to the true nature of Kim Davis and the meeting.
The newspaper’s reporting suggests the rift between Francis and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who wrote a bombshell accusatory letter about Francis’ knowledge of the abuse, could have been exacerbated by Viganò arranging a meeting between Francis and Davis during his 2015 trip to the United States.
The invitation “directly challenged Francis’ inclusive message and prompted a controversy that nearly overshadowed the trip,” the Times reported. An abuse survivor who had spoken to Francis at length told the newspaper that Francis told him Viganò nearly sabotaged the trip.
“I didn’t know who that woman was, and he snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it,” Juan Carlos Cruz recalled Francis saying, according to the New York Times.
“And I was horrified and I fired that nuncio,” Francis said, according to the Times article.
In July of 2020, Archbishop Viganò accused Pope Francis of heresy for promoting the “legitimization of homosexuality.”
Newsweek magazine reported: “Vigano is well known for his anti-gay views and has previously called for the pope to resign. In a recent interview with Italian journalist and Vatican expert Marco Tosatti, Vigano insisted that Pope Francis, who he refers to using his given name of Jorge Bergoglio, is involved with a plot to “corrupt” the church by promoting homosexuality.”
“For Bergoglio and his entourage sodomy is not a sin that cries out for vengeance in the presence of God, as the Catechism teaches,” said Vigano. “Bergoglio’s words on this topic – and even more the actions and words of those who surround him – unfortunately confirm that an operation of legitimization of homosexuality is currently underway.”
“Let’s not forget that the legitimization of homosexuality is part of the agenda of the New World Order – to which the Bergoglian church adheres openly and unconditionally,” he later added. “Not only for its destabilizing value in the social body, but also because sodomy is the principal instrument with which the Enemy intends to destroy the Catholic priesthood, corrupting the souls of the Ministers of God.”
National
LGBTQ Catholic groups slam Trump over pope criticism
‘Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate’
LGBTQ Catholic groups have sharply criticized President Donald Trump over his criticisms of Pope Leo XIV.
Leo on April 13 told reporters while traveling to Algeria that he had “no fear of the Trump administration” after the president described him as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in response to his opposition to the Iran war. (Trump on the same day posted to Truth Social an image that appeared to show him as Jesus Christ. He removed it on April 13 amid backlash from religious leaders.)
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, during a Fox News Channel interview on the same day said “in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Vance on April 14 once again discussed Leo during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Ga., saying he should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Miguel Díaz; and Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are among those who have criticized Trump over his comments. The president, for his part, has said he will not apologize to Leo.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” said Leo on Thursday at a cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon.
Francis DeBernardo is the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization. He told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Trump’s comments about Leo “are one more example of the ridiculous hubris of this leader (Trump) whose entire record shows that he is nothing more than a middle-school bully.”
“LGBTQ+ adults were often bullied as children, and they have learned the lesson that bullies act when they feel frightened or threatened,” said DeBernardo. “But secular power does not threaten the Vicar of Christ, and Pope Leo’s response illustrates this truth perfectly.”
DeBernardo added Trump “is obviously frightened that Pope Leo, an American, has more power and influence than the president on the world stage.”
“Like most Trumpian bullying, this strategy will backfire,” DeBernardo told the Blade. “Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate. Trump’s actions are not an example of his power, but of his impotence.”
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, echoed DeBernardo.
“He [Trump] has demonstrated throughout both presidencies that he doesn’t understand the basic concepts of any faith system that is founded on the dignity of human beings, the importance of common good,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade on Thursday during a telephone interview. “It’s just appalling.”
Duddy-Burke praised Leo and the American cardinals who have publicly criticized Trump.
“The pope’s popularity — given how much more respect Pope Leo has than the man sitting in the White House — is a blow to his ego,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade. “That seems to be a sore sport for him.”
“It’s such an imperialistic world view,” she added.
Leo ‘is the real peacemaker’
The College of Cardinals last May elected Leo to succeed Pope Francis after his death.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is the first American pope. He was the bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023.
Francis made him a cardinal in 2023.
Juan Carlos Cruz — a gay Chilean man and clergy sex abuse survivor who Francis appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — has traveled to Ukraine several times with Dominican Sister Lucía Caram since Russia launched its war against the country in 2022. Cruz on Thursday responded to Trump’s criticism of Leo in a text message he sent to the Blade from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
“I am in Ukraine under many attacks,” said Cruz. “Trump is an asshole and has zero right to criticize the Pope who is the real peacemaker.”
Belarus
Belarusian president signs bill to allow LGBTQ rights crackdown
Alexander Lukashenko known as ‘Europe’s last dictator’
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday signed a bill that will allow his government to crack down on LGBTQ advocacy.
The measure that Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” and is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed would punish anyone found guilty of “propaganda of homosexual relations, gender change, refusal to have children, and pedophilia” with fines, community labor, and 15 days in jail.
The House of Representatives, the lower house of the Belarusian National Assembly, last month approved the bill. The Council of the Republic, which is the parliament’s upper chamber, passed it on April 2.
Belarus borders Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Kazakhstan is among the countries that have enacted Russian-style anti-LGBTQ propaganda laws in recent years.
The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over its anti-LGBTQ propaganda law. Hungarian voters on April 12 ousted Viktor Orbán, a Putin ally who had been their country’s prime minister since 2010.
Senegal
Senegalese court issues first conviction under new anti-LGBTQ law
Man sentenced to six years in prison on April 10
A Senegalese court has issued the first conviction under a new law that further criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Associated Press notes the court in Pikine-Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, the Senegalese capital, on April 10 convicted a 24-year-old man of committing “acts against nature and public indecency” and sentenced him to six years in prison.
Authorities arrested the man, who Senegalese media reports identified as Mbaye Diouf, earlier this month. The court also fined him 2 million CFA ($3,591.04).
Lawmakers in the African country on March 11 nearly unanimously passed the measure that increases the penalty for anyone convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations from one to five years in prison to five to 10 years. The bill that Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko introduced also prohibits the “promotion” or “financing” of homosexuality in Senegal.
MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ group based in the U.S., reportedly worked with Senegalese groups to advance the bill that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed on March 31.
“This prison sentence is unlawful under international law,” said Human Rights Watch on Wednesday. “Senegal is bound by treaty obligations that protect every person’s right to dignity, privacy, and equality.”
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