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Compiled By GayToday
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Rome, Italy—Following Rome's allocation of $182,000 to gay rights organizers
working to assure the success of the fabled city's World Pride Roma 2000 celebration, Vatican officials are openly expressing their dismay. The celebration, they note, will be taking place in the middle of a Catholic Holy Year.
As many as 30 million Roman Catholic pilgrims will therefore be brushing elbows on Rome's streets with hundreds of thousands of happy-go-lucky gay visitors from many nations. |
GayToday Illustration
Could the Pope be worried that pilgrims won't be able to differentiate between the priests in vestements and the queens in drag? |
"The (Roman) authorities know that Rome is a holy city, as the Concordat says, a city apart because of the presence of the Roman Pontiff,'' complained Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State and the Vatican's second most powerful cleric after the Pope. "It is a matter of a sense of proportion, of balance, and I am sure the authorities will reconsider the matter,'' he said.
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Mayor Francesco Rutelli has refused to back down, however. He says: "You might not go along with the gay pride event, but it would be a mistake to ban it. Rome has a millennium-old code of welcome and respect that won't change in 2000."
Mario Baccini, a pro-Vatican member of parliament, called the Mayor's decision a ``moral and material slap'" in the face for the Pope.
Word of the Holy See's displeasure over the city's cooperation with Pride organizers surfaced following news reports of the city's $182,000 allocation to cover security arrangements during Pride events.
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Rome's mayor replied that the cash grant would not be used for "any initiative
that was not in keeping with the culture of civil respect proper for the city of
Rome.'"
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