Popular French Priest Faces Legal Action for Saying Homosexuality Is a Sin
By Hélène de Lauzun, European Conservative. (image credit: European Conservative)
The French government is taking legal action against a Catholic priest for describing homosexuality as a sin. While this latest attack on traditional Catholic moral teaching has little chance of success, it does demonstrate the growing animosity towards and incomprehension of the catechism of the Catholic Church by a society that has made the promotion of homosexuality one of its main battlegrounds.
Abbé Matthieu Raffray, a priest who celebrates the traditional Latin Mass and who is well known to French Catholics on social media, posted a short video on temptations on his Instagram account as part of his Lenten teachings, in which he explains that homosexuality is a “weakness”: “We all have weaknesses: the greedy, the hot-tempered, the homosexual,” he explained to his audience. He considered homosexuality to be one of “all the sins, all the vices that can exist in humanity.” Aurore Bergé, the French minister responsible for combating discrimination, described his comments as “unacceptable.”
In a message posted on X, she said that she “asked the Interministerial Delegation for Combating Racism, Antisemitism and Anti-LGBT Hatred (DILCRAH) to report the matter to the public prosecutor on the basis of article 40” of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The DILCRAH took note of the minister’s message and confirmed that it had “notified the public prosecutor of the homophobic comments made by Mr. Raffray on his social networks.” In its message, the delegation added: “To speak of homosexuality as a weakness is shameful.”
Abbé Raffray is also under attack because the minister considers that his comments indirectly promote “conversion therapies,” which have been banned in France since 2022. In January, playing on words, the priest stated on his Twitter account that “every spiritual retreat is a conversion therapy,” but his comments unleashed a wave of hostile comments from LGBT associations.
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