The Pope is said to have called the man to reassure him about his s*xuality.
Christophe Trutino had written to the Pope to emotionally explain his inner turmoil in reconciling his s*xuality with his faith, explaining how he was terrified he was going to hell for being gay.
The 25-year-old sales assistant from Toulouse said that due to the ongoing row over
France’s battle over same-s*x marriage, he was struggling to stay a believer in the Catholic faith.
Trutino said he was left stunned when he then received a phone call from the head of the Catholic Church himself. “Your homos*xuality. It doesn't matter”, the Pope reportedly told him, according to the local newspaper La Dépêche du Midi.
"It was he who started the conversation," Trutino said. He said 'Christopher? It's Pope Francis'. I was unsettled, of course. I asked, " Really? " He replied: "Yes."
“I received the letter that you sent me. You need to remain courageous and continue to believe and pray and stay good,” the Pope told him during the nine-minute conversation in Spanish.
“Your homos*xuality. It doesn’t matter. One way or another, we are all children of God. This is why we must continue to be good," the Pope told him.
There has been a rise in French homophobia following a spike in anti-gay marriage protestors. Trutino said the phone call ended with the Pope asking him to pray for him and that he would do the same in return.
“When I hung up the phone, I was completely filled with emotion," the man said. 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.
While Francis' predecessor Benedict XVI was an extreme opponent of gay rights – once describing homos*xuality as a "defection of human nature" – the most recent Pope has expressed his tolerance towards homos*xuality.
During his recent visit to Brazil he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"
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