Pope calls growing transgender acceptance ‘terrible’

Last week, in a closed-door meeting with Catholic Bishops, Pope Francis criticized schools that teach children it’s okay to assume whatever gender identity feels right to them.

In the transcript released by the Vatican, he is quoted saying:

“Today, in schools they are teaching this to children–to children!–that everyone can choose their gender,” he said in the private meeting. “Speaking with Pope Benedict, who is well and has a clear mind, he was telling me: ‘Holiness, this is the epoch of sin against God the Creator, he’s intelligent! God created man and woman, God created the world this way, this way, this way, and we are doing the opposite.’”

Of course he is referring to Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in 2013 but continues to live at the Vatican.

He added that the increased visibility of the trans community is due to “ideological colonizing” through textbooks financed by wealthy institutions in “very influential countries,” which he described as “terrible.”

This belief stays consistent with a statement he made earlier this year in which he said, “The young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created,” warning that “absolute power over our own bodies…leads to the delusion that we enjoy absolute power over creation.”

In April of last year at a general audience in Rome, the Pope said, “I wonder if so-called gender theory may not also be an expression of frustration and resignation that aims to erase sexual differentiation because it no longer knows how to come to terms with it.”

“Nobody chooses a gender identity. They discover it.”