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MESTRE – «When Francesco revealed himself as homosexual, the priest did not grant him absolution, and the following Sunday he has it denied communion, in front of the whole community. “Papa Roberto, from Mestre, who prefers to remain anonymous to avoid intimidation already suffered, has a trembling voice when he traces the history of his family, a story that speaks of rejected identities, of innate characteristics that many times society, at all levels, struggles to recognize and accept. «I remember that day – it begins – when my son Francesco confided in us his true nature in a dizzying cry.
Ours was a very committed Catholic family in the parish, and those words were a tragedy for us, accustomed to the doctrine of the faith that considers that homosexuals are the wrong people and should be treated. Francis did not want to know more about priests and we find ourselves at a crossroads: to follow the Church and abandon our son, or to leave the Church and remain close to Francis. We had no doubts: we are moving away from a Church incapable of welcoming a desperate sixteen-year-old girl. Roberto’s family is isolated for several years, before the encounter that changes everything. “We met people who suffered the same experiences – he remembers – and then a convention of Catholics under the spiritual guidance of three border priests, with girls and boys from all over Italy, rejected by the Church, by society, young people beaten, raped, expelled from home, sometimes saying “we send you to the psychiatrist” ».
At that time, after 20 years, Roberto and his wife became involved and formed a group of Catholic parents to support the battle for the recognition and acceptance of their LGBT children (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender). “They call us” All children of God “-explains Roberto- and we use the term homo-affective because these children are born that way, with a different affectivity and if the Lord created them that way, why should we discriminate against them? The group, a solidarity reality of self-help Mutual that welcomes, listens, shares and consoles so that no one feels alone and abandoned, begins to receive emails: “I’m a girl, I need to talk,” says a message. «We meet and talk to each other for an hour – says Roberto – and only at the end, hesitantly, does he confide in us that he is homosexual. Girls are even more in trouble than boys. We recently welcomed three in their forties, and one of them was forced to go to Caritas to eat, because the they threw out of home. In the end they asked us if they could call us mom and dad: “you are our parents,” they said. We are meeting many desperate people -he continues- who take psychiatric drugs, with suicidal tendencies; one of them, rejected by his family lia, recently took his own life. We try to instill in them confidence, hope, we put them in contact with “Greater is love”, the parallel group created by our children and now we no longer feel alone, but free, beginning each meeting with a prayer ».
But mothers and fathers did not stop there and asked and managed to be received by the Pope (“the Church loves these children of God”), by the Patriarch of Venice and by the Bishop of Treviso. “They have given us important openings – reveals Roberto – although it will not be easy to go from words to actions: I have questioned 50 years of life, the Church will have to rework 2,000 doctrine, but it is an effort that must be made, in Date Hurry, if you want to continue being a teacher of a changing society, because each day that passes is one more day of suffering. However, we will not stop, stimulating the ecclesiastical hierarchies and raising awareness from below to that majority of priests who do not have the courage to expose themselves and who justify themselves saying “the parishioners are not prepared to address these issues.” There is immense faith in the homo-affective world – he concludes – these young people are not wrong, on the contrary, they show extraordinary intelligence and sensitivity and if they came to the world like this, it means that God wanted them that way.
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