Ex-Democrat Senator Steps Down from Vatican Role Post Pope Francis’ Gay Joke Controversy

Look, I get it. Who hasn’t made a joke or two that they didn’t later regret?

So when Pope Francis made a joke about gay men and used a slang term that many people find offensive to describe them, I’m inclined to cut him some slack.

It would be one thing if we had media reports of him doing it daily, but that’s not the case here. Every dog, as someone smarter than me once wrote, gets one bite.

Besides, he was reportedly using an Italian word — Barron’s called “frociaggine” a “Roman term” that “translates loosely as the offensive English words ‘f*****s’ or ‘poofs.’” And Italian is not Francis’ first language.

One has to wonder, given the timing, whether it was Francis’ wording that led to U.S. Ambassador Joe Donnelly resigning his position at the Vatican after saying last year, according to Politico, that he planned to stay in place through the end of 2024.

New: Ambassador Joe Donnelly tells me he will step down from his post at the Vatican on July 8 and return to Indiana.

“It’s been an amazing privilege to serve the Country and the President,” he said.

— Adam Wren (@adamwren) May 30, 2024

Politico’s Adam Wren scooped the news of Donnelly’s departure, receiving a text message from the former Democratic senator from Indiana on Thursday.

“It’s been an amazing privilege to serve the Country and the President,” Donnelly told Wren in the text.

Asked for comment, the White House reportedly sent Wren to the State Department, and the State Department didn’t respond.

Wren noted that a spokesperson for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, also nominally a Catholic, tried to get ahead of the rumor mill by posting a simple “no” to social media with regard to the idea that Pelosi might want to “end her career by serving Biden at the Vatican.”

Francis used the ill-advised term about seminaries, repeating his opposition to gay men training to become Catholic priests by joking that some seminaries contained “already too many frociaggine,” Barron’s reported.

Some of those present argued that the pontiff wasn’t aware of how offensive the term was, given that he is from Argentina and his first language is Spanish. (He also apologized for it.)

Official Catholic doctrine, of course, is that same-sex acts are “intrinsically disordered,’ Barron’s pointed out, even if Francis has taken steps to liberalize the church by welcoming LGBTQ participants and even making provision for the blessing of same-sex couples.

Personally, I’ll take your “intrinsically disordered” and raise you a “obviously sinful,” based on passages in both the Old and New Testaments.

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” Moses wrote in Lev. 18:22 — a passage that describes a number of sexual sins, by the way, and not merely same-sex acts.

Among many passages in the New Testament about homosexual practices is 1 Cor. 6:9,10: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

By the way, let me give you the footnote from the English Standard Version that appears after the word “homosexuality” at the end of verse 9: “The two Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts.”

Just in case you were wondering what exactly Paul was referring to, that ought to clear it up.

That’s what the Bible says about homosexuality; there are a lot of other verses that offer a similar message, but those two are enough to give anyone who hasn’t read much Scripture a good idea of what it says.

Of course, homosexuals can be saved just like anyone else — read more of the context of that passage from 1 Corinthians and Paul makes that very plain. Sexual sin causes virtually all humans to stumble in one way or another; lust is lust and immorality is immorality, even if the objects of our sexual desires are very different.

For my part, I’m just happy to see Pope Francis making a statement that actually agrees with Scripture — which is not always been his habit.

I can’t agree with the manner in which he expressed his opinion that gay men shouldn’t be in seminary. But I surely agree with the substance of his opinion.

Which, honestly, I find kind of refreshing.