“Grassi says he believes the pope was misled into meeting Kim Davis, who has hailed her encounter as an endorsement of her defiance of U.S. laws and refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses”.
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Grassi said the pope used to teach him literature and psychology in high school in Argentina in the 1960s.
Well, that hug definitely took place and it was caught on video with Iwan Bagus, Grassi’s boyfriend of 19 years, present; he also received a warm welcome from the pope.
“I need to testify to the fact that he’s not this homophobic person that people think he is”, Grassi said of the pope.
“He met with me and my boyfriend – knowing that I am his friend and that my boyfriend is my boyfriend”, Grassi told CNBC. “He has never said anything negative”, he said.
The gay couple met the pope in Rome in 2013 shortly after Francis became pontiff, Grassi said.
Rosica called Davis’ situation “a very complex case, it’s got all kinds of intricacies”.
Francis’ meeting with Davis was originally kept secret and criticized as a mistake during an otherwise positive trip to the United States. “We should understand it as that”, Father Thomas Rosica, Vatican spokesman, said.
This all goes to show the pope’s stance on homosexuality is complicated, particularly in relation to church doctrine.
“While I am glad to hear the story of the Yayo Grassi meeting, I still wish that Pope Francis would be more forthcoming about his personal experiences and relationships with LGBT people”, said DeBernardo.
Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, which has been representing Davis, pushed back against the Vatican statements on Friday, saying the pontiff’s meeting with Davis and Francis’ later statements of support for conscientious objection in a news conference “indicate support” for her claims.
Davis, a Rowan County, Kentucky clerk, spent five days in jail for defying a series of federal court orders to issue same-sex marriage licenses after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country.
Kim Davis’s lawyer also confirms it was the papal nuncio who invited Davis to meet the pope.
Davis was among them and had a “brief meeting”, he said.
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Davis said earlier this week that she and her husband met briefly with the pope at the Vatican’s nunciature in Washington and that he thanked her for her courage and encouraged her to “stay strong”. He described last week’s encounter as “two friends seeing each other after a while”.
