WYD: Searching for the right answers

(Vatican Radio) Welcoming hundreds of thousands of young people from across the globe, the World Youth Day programme foresees a vast number of events especially conceived and organised to engage and involve the participants.
The highlights of the week-long programme of course are the events which see Pope Francis’ presence, but during the rest of the day the young people can listen to guest speakers, participate in workshops, and take part in catechesis sessions given around the city by bishops from all over the world.
Vatican Radio’s Sean Patrick Lovett dropped into to listen to one such catechesis and was particularly intrigued and interested at what he heard.
The catechesis in question was led by the Bishop of Darwin in Australia, Eugene Hurley, who had answers for a young woman with a difficult question.
The young woman described herself as Catholic and homosexual. She asked Bishop Hurley why the Church marginalises and appears not to love homosexual people…

To hear what he replied listen to the interview…

Bishop Hurley says he was very grateful for the question which obviously sprung from a very hurt part of the person’s soul “because she loves God and she loves the Church and finds herself being marginalised by what is commonly thought to be the position of the Catholic Church in regard to homosexuality”.

He says he was happy to respond to the question as it is one that is on the minds of many people, especially young people, because homosexuality and transgender is a reality for many people across the world”.

“What they want to know is where does this reality fit within the Catholic Church”.

Bishop Hurley says he explained to her that “God doesn’t make mistakes, that God doesn’t make junk, that God only makes beautiful things, and that she is one of them.”

The bishop explains it is part of his role in his position as Chair of Commission at the Australian Bishops Conference to work with homosexual people and to listen carefully to their reality and to “discover ways in which God is calling the Church to engage with those people and the reality of their lives”.

Bishop Hurley reveals that he shared with the young woman a recent talk he had with a young man who said he would have loved to be heterosexual, but as much as he would have loved it, he is not”. This young man – he said – “wanted to know where does that leave him in the mind of God, in the mind of the Church, in his relationship with people?”

The bishop says he asked the young woman to gift the Church by speak candidly, transparently and genuinely to the leaders of the Church wherever she is “so that we might have a new way of understanding God’s call to the Church to embrace every aspect of sexuality, and more particularly at this time, homosexuality and transsexuals” so that “we must find a way because God loves everybody and we must find a way of expressing that in the Church”.

He concluded saying that whilst we may not have all the answers and “to some degree that does not worry me, what does excite me is that we can walk together prayerfully and lovingly to discover the answer”.