McAleese urges O’Brien to help gays

MARY McALEESE, the former Irish president, has called on Cardinal Keith O’Brien to speak out about his life in order to help gay people who feel they must pretend to be ­heterosexual.

Speaking on Monday at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, Mrs McAleese criticised both Cardinal O’Brien for speaking out “in the most homophobic way”, and the Church for being in denial over homosexuality, which, she said, was “not so much the elephant in the room but a herd of elephants”.

Mrs McAleese said of Cardinal O’Brien, who resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh last year after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him by priests: “I would have thought Cardinal Keith O’Brien, in telling the story of his life – if he was willing to do that – could have been of great assistance to gay people, not just in the Church but elsewhere, who felt over many, many years constrained to pretend to be heterosexual while at the same time ­acting a different life.”

She said: “I don’t like my Church’s attitude to gay people. I don’t like ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’. If you are the so-called sinner, who likes to be called that? We also know that within the priesthood a very large number of priests are gay.”

Mrs McAleese singled out Pope Benedict XVI’s attitude to homosexuality for criticism, saying: “Things written by Benedict, for ­example, were completely contradictory to modern science and to modern understanding, and to the understanding of most Catholics nowadays in relation to homosexuality.

“Nowadays, it is not something that is perceived as something that is intrinsically disordered. Homosexual conduct is not seen as evil.”

Mrs McAleese was president of the Republic of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, is studying for a doctoral degree in canon law at the Gregorian University in Rome and is also Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College, Massachusetts.