Fascinating quotes attributed to Pope Francis... "The 'gay lobby' is spoken of, and it's true, that's there... we need to see what we can do."

He is a new kind of Pope - to be sure.

He has proven to be candid, focused, prayerful, kind, loving, merciful, patient, respectful of others, and rather casual.  I like to say he knows what we know.  He's like us - he is one of us 'ordinary people'.  He sees the problems the way we do - I think.  If he speaks of them, sitting around in a group - I think he knows.

Rocco Palmo wrote about the 'audience' pictured above - making clear that the transcript of what the Pope supposedly said is unofficial and comes from a Latin American news source...

During an audience last Thursday with the leadership of the religious conference of his home-continent and the Caribbean, the Pope is said to have aired (without apparent prompting) the realities of "a current of corruption" and a "gay lobby" in the Roman Curia...

What did he say?

"In the Curia there are holy people, truly, there are holy people. But there's also a current of corruption – there's that, too, it's true.... The 'gay lobby' is spoken of, and it's true, that's there... we need to see what we can do.
The reform of the Roman Curia is something that almost all the cardinals sought in the congregations before the Conclave. I sought it myself. [But] I can't do the reform myself, these matters of management.... I'm very disorganized, I've never been good in this. But the cardinals of the commission are going to carry it forward. There's [Oscar] Rodríguez Maradiaga, who carries the baton [as the group's coordinator], there's [the Chilean Francisco Javier] Errázuriz, they're very organized. The one from Munich [Reinhard Marx] is also very organized. They will take it forward.... Pray for me that I make the fewest mistakes possible."

He also spoke about strange gods - or spiritualities.  Recall, early on in his papacy he mentioned praying to God - that some people do not pray to God - these things remain on his mind:

"I'll share two worries of mine. One is a pelagian current that's in the church at this time...

There are certain restorationist groups. I know them as I took to receiving them in Buenos Aires. And you feel like you've gone back 60 years! 

 

The second [worry] is over a gnostic current. These pantheisms... they're both currents of elites, but this one is of a more formed elite. I knew of one superior general who encouraged the sisters of her congregation to not prayer in the morning, but to give themselves a spiritual bath in the cosmos, such things.... These bother me because they lack the Incarnation! And the Son of God who became our flesh, the Word made flesh, and in Latin America we have this flesh being shot from the rooftops! What happens to the poor, in their sorrows, that is our flesh. - Francis Unplugged

  

I do not purport to know what the Pope really said, but it sure sounds like the way he speaks.  I especially love his emphasis upon the poor - or the 'damaged' - those on the fringes.  That is where I am happy to be.  Pope Francis is reported to have said: "The Gospel is not the ancien regime, nor is it this pantheism. If you look to the outskirts; the indigent... the drug addicts! The trade [trafficking] of persons... That's the Gospel. The poor are the Gospel.... "

Likewise, he appears to allow for mistakes - because they can be corrected...  Pope Benedict said something similar when speaking of priests who work in youth ministry, that in searching for a way to convey Church teaching sometimes mistakes are made - but they can be corrected.  Sounds a bit lenient in our day when errors abound, but 'that's the way love goes'...  I think.

The 'gay lobby' is spoken of, and it's true, that's there...

we need to see what we can do.

What?