Pope embarrassed by meeting with Kim Davis

The Vatican released a statement Friday attempting to portray Pope Francis 1’s meeting with homophobe Kim Davis as a misunderstanding.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in Friday morning, according to the New York Times.

New York Times
Liberty Counsel, which represents Davis, says the Vatican is lying, according to the Advocate, a gay advocacy publication.

Davis had been briefly jailed for refusing to marry same-sex couples and her supporters claimed the meeting with the pope showed that he supported her.

a statement released on Friday morning.

Supporters of Davis, who was jailed for a week for refusing to obey a court order requiring her to issue marriage licenses to gays, had claimed the papal meeting was proof the Vatican supported her.

“I was very disappointed to see the pope having been used that way, and that his willingness to be friendly to someone was turned against him,” Father James Martin said.  Martin, editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America.

The Vatican stopped short of calling the author of an article comparing Davis to a conscientious objector a liar.

“Inside the Vatican” reported that the pope had said:

“Conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right. Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying ‘this right that has merit, this one does not.’ It (conscientious objection) is a human right.”

“Would that include government officials as well?” “It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right.” 

Unlike conscientious objectors, such as draftees who refuse to fight, Davis had run for election to her post knowing full well that it was quite likely that same-sex marriages would soon be legal.

Not only did Davis decline to offer to do some other community service instead of marrying gays, she even ordered her staff not to issue licenses with her name on them.

That would be the equivalent of a conscientious objector, assigned to carry a stretcher for the wounded in combat, telling other solders not to fire their weapons.
It was no surprise that reports subsequently appeared on news-for-hire CNN that the pope had met a gay couple before seeing Davis.