Papa Pancho

If you want to be the centre of attention at a dinner party, announce that you’ve become a Catholic. The table will go silent. You might as well have admitted to condoning pedophilia or the subjugation of women. At least, this was my experience ten years ago when I converted. “How could you?” was the subtext of even the politest response. Pope Francis’s often cited comment in July 2013, just as I was about to begin my Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults course, helped me justify my decision: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” That made conversion feel more reasonable, at least from my perspective as a gay man, because, as many pointed out, why would I join a club where no one wanted me as a member?

A decade later, the Catholic Church is still adamant that “although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the...