The Pope

“OH MY GOD!”

I’m not proud that the Vatican chose an Argentinean Pope. Besides being complicit with the last military government, Jorge Bergoglio –Francis I– is particularly homophobic.

That’s precisely why I laughed so hard when my lover, H., reminded me about something. H lives right by a Catholic church, and one Sunday morning I awoke in his house to the sound of church bells and a loudspeaker making an announcement. I tried to go back to sleep but the loudspeaker kept repeating its message every ten minutes, so eventually I gave up and paid attention to what it was saying: as it turned out, Bergoglio was visiting the church to say some special kind of Mass. Bergoglio is infamous in Argentina among anyone who supports gay rights, or women’s rights, or any kind of human rights, so H and I joked about attending Mass to get his blessing.

It’s a silly story, but I find it amusing that my closest encounter with the new Pope happened while I was in bed with a gay man, under a huge rainbow flag pinned to the wall, in an all-homo household.