Pope Francis said Sunday that gays and
other marginalized groups deserve an apology from the Roman Catholic
Church.
Speaking to reporters aboard his flight
home to Rome, Francis was asked whether he agrees with the German
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who said after the Orlando shooting that the
Church owes an apology to the LGBT community.
“I believe that the Church not only
should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended,”
Francis said, “but has to apologize to the poor, the exploited
women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for
having blessed many weapons.”
Pope Francis explained that he was not
only talking about Catholics.
“The Church must say it is sorry for
not having behaved as it should many times, many times – when I say
'the Church,' I mean we Christians, because the Church is holy; we
are the sinners. We Christians must say we are sorry,” he
said.
Marx, who made his comments at a
conference in Dublin, is a closer adviser to the Pope, NPR reported.