Pope Francis with Clare Byarugaba at the Vatican, August 2024.
Posted on 08/19/2024 3:18:53 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis with Clare Byarugaba at the Vatican, August 2024.
Pope Francis encouraged Ugandan LGBT activists to “keep fighting for your rights” during a private meeting after an anti-sodomy bill was signed into law by the country’s president in May 2023.
In an unannounced meeting last week, the Argentine Pontiff welcomed pro-LGBT activists from Uganda to the Vatican for a private audience. Prominent LGBT activist Clare Byarugaba stated that Francis told her during the meeting that “discrimination is a sin and violence against LGBTIQ communities is unacceptable.”
Byarugaba serves as diversity, equity and inclusion officer for Chapter Four Uganda, which is a “civil liberties” group modeled in part on the American Civil Liberties Union and includes the protection of homosexual activity as part of its mission.
Posting on X about the meeting with Francis, Byarugaba wrote that she told the Pope about “the ruinous impact of the Uganda’s *two in a decade Anti-LGBTIQ rights Laws*#AHA23 and the gross human rights violations therein. He reiterated;- Discrimination is a sin and violence against LGBTIQ communities is Unacceptable.”
Also present at the meeting was Ebenezer Peegah, an LGBT activist and director of Rightify Ghana.
“I told him that I joined the Catholic Church when I was young and we always prayed for the Pope,” Peegah wrote afterward. “I always asked myself if the Pope would pray for me as a queer person? But, his progressive statements brought hope. So, I thanked him.”
In a social media post, Rightify Ghana attested that “Pope Francis encouraged us to ‘keep fighting for your rights,’ and that’s exactly what we will do.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church #2357 teaches that “‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Catholic teaching on transgender issues also remains unchanging, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.” (CCC # 2333)
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1975 document Persona Humana also echoed this with the words, “There can be no true promotion of man’s dignity unless the essential order of his nature is respected.”
The law Byarugaba referred to in her conversation with Francis is the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which contains clear and forthright restrictions on the practice of homosexual actions. Approved by President Yoweri Museveni in May 2023, the law is “an act to prohibit any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex; to prohibit the promotion or recognition of sexual relations between persons of the same sex; and for related matters.”
Under the terms of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, those who perform homosexual acts can face life in prison, and those who commit an aggravated homosexual act – such as rape, or acts committed with a child, or with a person who is mentally ill or advanced in age or drugged or who contracts a terminal illness from the sexual act – can face the death penalty.
As noted by Asuman Basalirwa, the politician who introduced the bill into Uganda’s parliament, the Act does not implement a mandatory death sentence in the case of an aggravated act. Instead, the death penalty is included as a possible maximum sentence in such cases. Basalirwa noted the death penalty is also a maximum sentence for other offenses in Uganda, including murder and terrorism.
The law has been internationally condemned by politicians, including Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, “human rights” groups and LGBT activists. The U.S. and the World Bank levied financial and travel restrictions after the Act was passed into law.
Much reporting and activism has been levied against the mention of the death penalty in the anti-sodomy law, with few reports providing accurate information about the precise content and context of circumstances in which the death penalty is listed as a maximum sentence.
The Act has also faced legal challenges in Uganda. In April, the Constitutional Court ruled mostly in favor of the law but did strike down aspects of the law that criminalized providing premises for homosexual acts and the failure to report homosexual acts. Judges ruled that for such actions to be illegal would be “inconsistent with right to health, privacy and freedom of religion.”
Among Uganda’s most notable LGBT campaigners is Dr. Frank Mugisha, who welcomed Byarugaba’s papal audience. Posting online, Mugisha wrote, “We appreciate the Holy Father, Pope Francis, for meeting with LGBTQ activists from Africa. Thank you. Love is Love.”
Mugisha is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).
As LifeSite has previously highlighted, SMU has reportedly been “sexually exploiting and recruiting” underage boys, offering payment to take part in homosexual pornographic films.
READ: Young Ugandan man accuses African pro-LGBT advocacy group of ‘exploiting’ him to do gay porn
According to one alleged victim documented by LifeSite, SMUG would indoctrinate him and other young attendees, many of whom are allegedly ages 13-17, with “fake lies about human rights” before proceeding to use their “well-equipped auditorium” to show them homosexual pornography and explain how it’s produced.
“And then they convinced them … that each video that you shoot, you’re given 5 million shillings,” he said. “I was sexually exploited and recruited into making gay porn videos. I happened to shoot several gay porn videos for SMUG, which … are actually uploaded on websites … for commercial purposes, of course.”
SMUG was ordered by the Ugandan government to be shut down in the fall of 2022, with official reasons being the group had failed to correctly register as an NGO. However, the victim says he presented Uganda’s National Bureau for NGOs with proof of “sexually trafficking, recruiting, sexually exploiting minors” into homosexual pornography and profiting off them.
Dr. Mugisha was named by Hilary Clinton as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024.
Ping
Wow.
Which makes him officially part of LGBT.
He should be urging this individual to repent.
What rights are those Francis?
The right to buggery?
The right to transition children?
The right to marry, adopt children and convert them to pederasty?
The right to their particular and offensive mental illness?
“discrimination is a sin.." must stand beside the Catholic catechism and the protection of society against
abject and unrepentant sinning.
Pray for the conversion of Pope Francis to Catholicism.
How cruel. LGBTQ is death in Uganda. Why doesn’t Fran go there themselves and speak on LGBTQ issues without thelevel of security they have at home. Evil Just Evil.
Not necessarily:
Under the terms of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, those who perform homosexual acts can face life in prison, and those who commit an aggravated homosexual act – such as rape, or acts committed with a child, or with a person who is mentally ill or advanced in age or drugged or who contracts a terminal illness from the sexual act – can face the death penalty.
Pope MonkeyPox the First.
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