Last week, Kim Davis and her lawyers claimed that Davis had met “privately” (and secretly) with Pope Francis when he was in Washington DC. The claim was that Davis was invited to the Vatican’s DC Embassy and that Pope Francis thanked Davis for her bravery and courage in standing up for heterosexual marriage and her illegal acts to exclude gay couples from enjoying their constitutional right to marry. For days, the Vatican did not release any formal statement about the meeting, so Davis’s version of events sort of became the public record and everyone was like, “Ugh, the Pope made such a bad call.” Then on Friday, the Vatican finally said something. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi issued this statement:
“Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis. His meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.”
[Via The Atlantic]
Basically, the Vatican is all, “Seriously, he meets with so many people, just because he shakes someone’s hand, doesn’t mean he endorses their life/politics/etc.” There are still questions though, and the questions, answers and speculation are sort of fascinating. The Vatican’s people are insisting privately to media outlets that THEY had nothing to do with the Davis meeting. Left unsaid is who exactly invited Davis to the embassy. The answer might be the papal nuncio to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was already tossed out of the Vatican’s hierarchy a few years ago and set out to pasture in America. You can read more about him here.
Basically, this whole thing has turned out to be a HUGE headache for the Vatican’s PR people who believed that they had pulled off the American visit flawlessly, only to see this one small moment get blown up. So, in an attempt at damage control, the Vatican released some very interesting information to go along with the Kim Davis statement – CNN got an exclusive about Pope Francis meeting privately with an openly gay couple, Yayo Grassi and Iwan Bagus. Grassi was one of the Pope’s students in Argentina (before the Pope was the Pope), and Grassi got for-real invited to meet with the Pope through all of the appropriate channels. The Pope knew full well that Grassi was/is gay and he was fine with it, which seemed to be the message he was trying to preach, before Kim Davis and her lawyers hijacked the conversation.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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