In a few hours, the word went around the world. On May 20, before the Italian bishops gathered in a plenary assembly, and behind closed doors, Pope Francis affirmed that there would be too many “swatters” in Italian seminaries.
The use of this word, revealed by La Repubblica Monday May 27 at the end of the afternoon, took part in a meeting in which The cross had detailed the content elsewhere, on May 24. During a 90-minute question-and-answer sequence with the 270 bishops present in the Synod hall at the Vatican, the pope was questioned by two of them about homosexual candidates for the priesthood.
Responding to them, he then felt that it was better not to welcome them into the clergy, because of the ” problems “ created, according to him, by their presence, participants in The cross. For this, Francis had invoked his ” experience “and recommended support for young men thus rejected. “Above all, don’t talk to journalists about it”he added.
It is in this context that, according to several witnesses cited by La Repubblicaused the word « frociaggine “. This term taken from Roman slang commonly designates, in Italian, homosexual people.
In Rome, certain defenders of the Argentine pope were already attributing, in the evening, the use of this word to an imperfect knowledge of the Italian language. The Vatican, for its part, did not react on Monday evening, May 27. “According to the bishops contacted” speak Corriere della Sera, “it is obvious that the sovereign pontiff was not aware of how insulting his remarks were in Italian”writes the main transalpine daily on its site.
On December 18, Pope Francis authorized, through a declaration published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the blessing of same-sex couples. Faced with the uproar caused by the publication of this text, he had affirmed on several occasions that it was never a question of blessing “unions”but ” people “.
Francis had left his mark in the first months of his pontificate with a phrase that has remained famous: “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge them? ». But he has also, in the past, alluded to the need for parents wishing to ” cure ” children with homosexual tendencies, to resort to psychiatry. Comments made in 2018 which then caused a scandal.