In another act of the kind of humble outreach that has marked the early months of his papacy, Pope Francis called on Monday for the integration of gays into society, remarking that even as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, he has no right to "judge" gay people.
"If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn't be marginalized," Francis said during his first news conference, a wide-ranging and candid back-and-forth that took place aboard his flight back to Rome from World Youth Day in Brazil.
The comments, which were greeted with particular enthusiasm by gay and liberal Catholics, were in response to journalists' questions about allegations of corruption within a "gay lobby" of priests at the Vatican.