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Meet Mexico’s Anti-homophobic Bishop

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Bishop Raul Vera of Mexico has gotten attention this week for an interview with El País in which he harshly critiqued homophobia and intolerance as begin anti-catholic and ‘sick’.

Vera is a strong and active advocate of outreach to the LGBT community as well as other maligned groups in society such as immigrants, missing persons, indigenous people, prostitutes, drug addicts, and all outcasts, but this position has created problems. He is criticized by conservatives and catholics in Mexico, and has also made an enemy of the narco-cartels whose victims he helps.

In the interview he covers topics including homophobia, abortion, and drugs. He was asked what his opinions were regrading homosexuality since he baptized the daughter of a lesbian couple this year. Homosexuality, he says,

“…is a topic that we have refused to address. The people who say homosexuals are sick are sick themselves. I have a friend who is a priest and he is gay. The Church needs to come to them not with condemnation, but with dialogue. We cannot cancel out a person’s richness just because of his or her sexual preference. That is sick, that is heartless, that is lacking common sense.”

Bishop Raul Vera of Mexico

While still supporting the Church’s stance against homosexual behavior and marriage, the Bishop has nonetheless been an outspoken opponent of homophobia, although he has been ignored and disparaged for his stance in Mexico’s public sphere.

The ascension of Pope Francis, despite bringing no substantive changes to Church policy in the area, has reaffirmed a tone of compassion and a willingness to approach controversial progressive topics including the role of LGBT people and women in the Catholic community. As a result, Vera has received more of a platform since.

Last year, Vera responded to Pope Francis’s famous claim regarding homosexuality – ‘Who am I to judge?’

In a short video, he says that homophobia is a ‘mental illness’.

“They’re human beings deserving of respect. I am certain that [God] knows because, in reality, it’s many members of the Church who don’t want to recognize the scientific reality on the issue of homosexuality.”

Bishop Raul Vera of Mexico

Francis was himself a leading figure in Latin America as Cardinal Bergoglio, where he served as the head of the Argentine Conference of Bishops, and had an a confrontational but pragmatic and startlingly liberal approach to gay issues. During that time in his home-country Argentina, Bergolgio pushed for the Conference to endorse same-sex civil unions. This was meant to be an alternative to the same-sex marriage being considered at the time, which Bergolgio still condemmed.

Mexico today has limited marriage equality in certain regions of the country, such as capital Mexico City, and regional court challenges throughout the states.

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If only the world was as “open-minded” as us… Alas, matters of sexual identity and equal love, often cause so much friction in the rest of the world. Here, find an open dialogue on the issues facing our LGBT community.

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