Pope Francis' Gay Friend Speaks Out On Kim Davis Debacle

The Washington Post has found and interviewed the newly revealed gay friend of Pope Francis, Yayo Grassi, who did have an private audience with the Pope during his visit to the U.S.

Grassi met the future Pope during the 1960s as a high school student where Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) taught Argentine literature and psychology at Inmaculada Concepción.

Once this week's brouhaha erupted about the Pope's "meeting" with Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, Grassi says he had to speak out.

From the Washington Post:

“Although I didn’t know any details, I knew immediately that he had nothing to do with this, that this was arranged by other people without telling him the real character” of Davis, Grassi said. “I received from friends of mine a lot of quite disturbing mail, telling me that ‘This is your pope, look what he did, and he’s a coward,’ and my defense is ‘We don’t know anything. Just wait until things come out.’ And I’m extremely pleased that I was right. And I never had any doubt that I was right.”

In 2010, when Francis was a cardinal in Argentina, Grassi read media reports that his former teacher had condemned the legalization of same-sex marriage. So he sent a long e-mail to the cardinal expressing his disappointment, and the cardinal responded that his words had been cherry-picked and twisted, and that the reported sentiment was not true, according to Grassi.

He wrote that e-mail “with all the respect of the world,” Grassi said. “I stood firm on my position and I ended the e-mail saying ‘Don’t think it was easy for me to write this e-mail but I had to do it, and I think it was the right thing to do because 40 years ago you taught me I had to do it.’ He wrote back to me telling me, first of all, how sorry he was that he had hurt my feelings, that he had hurt me.

One of the things he said on that e-mail was that ‘I want you to know that in my work there is absolutely no place for homophobia.’ And I think that’s what I want people to know.”

Bolding is mine.