Youth Synod Pro Gay delegate: Church must ‘open arms wide to welcome and accept homosexuals’

ROME, October 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A lay delegate to the Vatican Youth Synod lectured the Catholic Church to cease “discrimination” against homosexuals Monday, relaying “powerful” sentiments she claims to have received from “non-Christian youths.”

Silvia Teresa Retamales Morales, a lay delegate to the synod hailing from Chile, was among the speakers at Monday’s daily briefing at the Vatican press office. Her remarks relayed sentiments she claimed she was repeating from “non-Catholic” and “non-Christian” youths who reached out to her, whom she claimed outnumbered the young Catholics reaching out.

“They wanted the church to be more open [...] a multicultural church that’s open to all, that should not be judgmental, a community that makes everybody feel at home, reflecting the message of Jesus Christ,” Morales said, according to a Vatican translator. “The church should not discriminate against minorities or people with different sexual orientations or who are poorer, no.” They also wanted a church more “welcoming” to “fragile” people, as well as a more representative role for women.

This answer, Morales claimed, was “even more powerful than the answer I received from Christian youths” (the Christian youths’ answer is not revealed in the clips).

In another passage speaking for herself, Morales defined homosexuals as people who “have the same rights we have,” who “live their faith within the church,” and who should “feel as children of God, not as problems.” She chided the church for “discrimination” in the form of people who “don’t open arms wide to welcome and accept homosexuals,” though her translated comments do not elaborate on literal examples of this “discrimination.”

“The church, whose first mandate is love, must fully recognize these brothers and sisters as people who need to be accompanied by us,” she declared. “The church has to be more inclusive. And we must help our brothers and sisters who have a different sexual orientation but who want to be part of the church.”

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