The Periscope Post

Pope Benedict XVI has exhorted Catholic bishops in England and Wales to oppose the UK’s Equality Bill, a piece of legislation that would seek to end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the church, with “missionary zeal.” The Pope also took the opportunity to confirm that he will be visiting England in the coming months, likely in September; it’ll be the first papal visit to the country since 1982.

Download a PDF of the Pope’s Address to Bishops here.

Speaking to the bishops during their visit to Rome on Monday, the Pope said that the Equality Bill “actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

The Equality Bill, pushed through by Minister for Women and Equality Harriet Harman, has a number of working pieces in it, but what the Pope is particularly concerned about is the piece that would make it illegal for the church to exclude gays and lesbians from hired positions.

Read Harman’s explanation of the Bill here.

The Pope coded his opposition to the Bill as a striking a blow for religious freedom: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs,” the Pope told the bishops.

The Guardian called the Pope’s exhortation and “unprecedented attack” on the government legislation, and spoke with the president of the National Secular Society, who said that his organization would be staging protests during the Pope’s state-funded visit. The BBC spoke with gay and lesbian rights group Stonewall, which condemned the Pope’s words.

But where most other papers focused on the Pope’s call to arms in terms of equal rights, religious freedom and the concerns of gay and lesbian rights groups, The Telegraph contextualized the Pope’s words in the current political climate. The Telegraph characterized the Pope’s words as an “attack” on Labour’s new law, noting that since Labour came to power, the party has locked horns several times with the 4.1 million Catholics living in England and Wales. Recently, ministers mounted an unsuccessful campaign to get religious schools to open their doors to students of other religious backgrounds. At the same time, some Catholic adoption agencies have either shut down or cut their ties with the church when they were told that they could no longer refuse gay and lesbians parents the right of adoption.

And The Telegraph noted that the Pope’s words come at a delicate time for the party, with a general election coming up in the next few months.