Pope calls student to say it's ok to be gay

Pope calls student to say it's ok to be gay
Head of the Catholic Church is praying for a religious French 25-year-old after he said he was in no position to judge gay people
06 September 2013 | By Joe Morgan
Pope Francis has rung a student to say being gay is okay

Pope Francis has stunned Catholics and gay people around the world alike by calling a gay student to tell him his sexuality does not matter.

Christophe Trutino, 25 from Toulouse in France, had written to the head of the Catholic Church as he was terrified he was going to hell for being gay.

He said, in the uproar over France’s battle over same-sex marriage, he was struggling to stay a believer in the Catholic faith.

On Thursday afternoon, he received a shocking response.

‘I received the letter that you sent me. You need to remain courageous and continue to believe and pray and stay good,’ the Pope reportedly told him.

‘Your homosexuality. It doesn’t matter.’

The French student said the phone call concluded with the Pope asking the student to pray for him and he would do the same in return.

‘When I hung up the phone, I was completely filled with emotion,’ the student told Midi Libre, as reported by The Local.

‘I was shaking. At the same time, the conversation was very relaxed. It was like a call from a friend, nice, very human.’

The Vatican has not confirmed yet whether the phone call took place.

Back in July, the Pope expressed his tolerance towards homosexuality on a visit to Brazil.

He said: ‘If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?’

It is not the first time the Pope has picked up the phone to talk to his faithful. In August, he called a woman who had been raped and had written to the Pontiff for help.

Francis' predecessor Benedict XVI was an extreme opponent of gay rights, once describing homosexuality as a 'defection of human nature'.
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