Pope Benedict XVI

• Birth date: 1927
  

VATICAN CITY — Declaring that he lacks the strength to do his job, Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday he will resign Feb. 28 — becoming the first pontiff to step down in 600 years. His decision sets the stage for a mid-March conclave to elect a new leader for a Catholic Church in deep turmoil.

The Pope has stated that gay families pose a “crisis” in which “the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost”. Meanwhile, I was taking my gay family on a trip to Disneyland. On the day we went, so did 40,000 other people. I thought about what the Pope could see if he had been there with us. We were as any other family in the park — we were photographed together, kissed and hugged each other when moved to do so, held hands, and laughed a lot…

AMSTERDAM — A website operator in The Netherlands is helping thousands of Dutch Catholics research information on how that can leave the church in protest of its opposition to same-sex marriage.

In private moments, it must be disconcerting to the Pope that gay couples pledging their love and lives to each other, have significantly greater moral authority than the Vatican. People, including most moderate Catholics, must be scratching their heads and wondering why a troubled religious institution that does not have its house in order, is obsessively trying to cause disorder in loving gay households?

A senior Roman Catholic Bishop in the United Kingdom will use his Christmas sermon to compare the legalization of same-sex marriage to the way the Nazis and Communists tried to undermine religion.

The Vatican stepped up its assault on marriage equality, as Pope Benedict XVI said in his Christmas message that same-sex marriage is destroying the very foundations of the family and what it means to be human.

In his global message for World Day of Peace, which takes place on Jan. 1, Pope Benedict XVI will use the opportunity to condemn same-sex marriage, which he calls a “serious harm to justice and peace.”

If there is one thing that irks me, it is having the Roman Catholic Church preach to me about sexual morality. It is a religious sect led by a virulently homophobic Pope that goes out of its way to trash my family. Yet, my family hasn’t spent a cent defending itself against nonexistent charges of child rape, while the Vatican has spent $2.5 billion on legal fees, prevention programs, and settlements relating to the sexual abuse of minors.

With the rhetoric being used by the Pope to his bishops, I have every reason to believe that these are not words of someone struggling to understand the reality of LGBT persons, these are the orders of attack given by a supreme commander to his highest officials.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Friday denounced the “powerful political and cultural currents” seeking to legalize same-sex marriage in the United States, and urged U.S. bishops to strengthen their teaching of the evils of premarital sex and cohabitation.