The three Christian leaders spoke on LGBTQ rights during an unprecedented joint airborne news conference Sunday while returning home from South Sudan, where they took part in a three-day ecumenical pilgrimage to try to nudge forward the young country’s peace process.
, in which he declared that laws that criminalize gay people were “unjust” and that “being homosexual is not a crime.”
“If he is coming here and he tells us that marriage of the same sex, homosexuality, is legal, we will say no,” Michael Makuei Lueth, South Sudan’s information minister, said after the pope’s AP interview and before his visit. “To condemn someone like this is a sin,” he said. “Criminalizing people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice.”
“I wish I had spoken as eloquently and clearly as the pope. I entirely agree with every word he said,” Welby said. Friction has been simmering within the global Anglican Communion for many years over its 42 provinces’ sharp differences on whether to recognize same-sex marriage and ordain LGBTQ clergy.
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