14 Jan Femen stages topless gay rights protest in Vatican
Activists from feminist movement Femen have staged a topless protest at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square, to support gay rights as the Pope was reading his Angelus blessing.
The four women with an “In Gay We Trust” slogan written over their topless bodies, screamed “Homophobes shut up” as the Pontiff started his address, provoking an angry reaction from the faithful in attendance. One woman in the crowd started hitting them with an umbrella, calling them “diabolical.”
The activists were removed from the square and briefly detained by Vatican police.
The topless protest by members of the Ukrainian feminist group comes as several hundred thousand demonstrators filled the streets of Paris during a protest against President Francois Hollande’s plans to legalize gay marriage later this year. The proposed law would allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
Meanwhile the Vatican once again stressed its opposition to gay adoption on Sunday and slammed the Femen protest.
On Sunday, the Holy See’s mouthpiece, L’Osservatore Romano, published a response to an Italian court’s rejection of an appeal by a father who feared his son would not have a balanced upbringing if he lived with his mother and her female partner.
In an editorial, Adriano Pessina, director of bioethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart stated: “The human is the masculine and the feminine … the monogamous family is the ideal place to learn the meaning of human relations and is the environment where the best form of growth is possible.”