Antony Hegarty Blasts ‘Shameful and Pathetic’ Pope Francis
Pope Francis is facing criticism after the pontiff’s historic U.S. visit reportedly included a meeting with Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has become a figurehead for those fighting against gay marriage in America. After the Vatican refused to confirm or deny the Pope’s meeting with Davis, Antony and the Johnsons singer Antony Hegarty blasted His Holiness on Facebook, writing, “Apparently Pope Francis was working behind the scenes to undermine gay rights in America. How shameful and pathetic of him.”
In the Pope’s various appearances during his U.S. visit, he spoke often of climate change and helping those in poverty but largely avoided the topics of gay marriage and abortion, The Guardian writes. However, the Pope reiterated that he views “traditional families” as a building block of Catholicism.
“For him to make insidious comments about how the ‘traditional family’ is under threat (presumably from gay marriage) and then to secretly meet that poor misguided cretin Kim Davis … I am glad that he is mobilizing his flock to care about nature, but I would still prefer that they would all just go to their heaven now and leave the rest of humanity and nature in peace here on earth,” Hegarty wrote.
The Pope also championed equality for all people regardless of orientation, but Hegarty viewed that as hypocritical. “Francis attempts to distract us from Catholic sexual predators with a smokescreen of fake moralizing about gay people and their rights to live as equals in society,” the singer wrote. “Pope Francis should line up 100 gay, lesbian and transgendered people from around the world and wash and kiss their feet. He should issue a formal apology on behalf of the Vatican for centuries of persecuting, torturing and killing gay and transgendered people in the name of their god.”
Hegarty closed out his Facebook tirade by writing of the Pope, “Knowing it would hurt his popularity, he slithers around in secret, watering the seeds of hatred and violence against gay, lesbian and transgendered people. Jesus Wept. “