ROME (News Desk) – In an unexpected development, spiritual leader of Roman Catholic Church Pope Francis has urged all Christians and the Church to seek forgiveness from homosexuals for their mistreatment over the centuries.
Talking to newsmen on his plane on the way back to Rome from Armenia, the Pope said that the Church should ask forgiveness from women for their ill-treatment and also for ignoring matters like child labor for a long period of time.
When a reporter asked if the Pope’s stance was a reaction to the recent killing of 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub, he recalled the Christian teachings that homosexuals “should not be discriminated against. They should be respected, accompanied pastorally.”
“I think that the Church not only should apologize … to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologize to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by work, it must apologize for having blessed so many weapons,” Pope Francis went on to say.
On the occasion, he also repeated a little different version of his “Who am I to judge?” comment from 2013, saying “The questions is: if a person who has that condition, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?”
