Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, who is the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, recently stated in a book he’s written, that AIDS is “intrinsic justice” for homosexuality, and called homosexuality a travesty of nature.
When writing on HIV-positive people, he said: “When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in turn. And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance. All I’m saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions,” the wrote said, “this epidemic is a sort of intrinsic justice.”
To better understand the Archbishop’s mentality, he has also written about his feelings on punishment for pedophile priests. He believes that elderly priests found to have sexually abused children should not be punished.
On television last week, the Archbishop said that these pedophile priests should be spared punishment, which he termed “a sort of vengeance”. In his own words, “Priests who abused children in their care must be made aware of what they did but if they’re no longer working, if they have no responsibilities, I’m not sure that exercising a sort of vengeance that will have no concrete result is humane.”
After writing and saying these things, the Archbishop’s spokesman, Juergen Mettepenningen, resigned from his position. Other bishops claimed that Archbishop Leonard’s comments were his personal views. Pedophile priests, although unable to be reached for comment, are assumed to agree with Archbishop Leonard.