(LifeSiteNews) — Since last week, pro-LGBTQ+ forces have heaped praise on the Pope Francis for his impact on advancing the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism within the Catholic Church.

Fr. James Martin, S.J., praised Pope Francis for being an “imperfect” “champion” for gender-confused and homosexual people in the pages of The New York Times, saying he did more for “L.G.B.T.Q. people – than all his modern predecessors combined.” 

Sadly, the opposite is true: Francis did more to set back the cause of those of us who daily deal with unwanted same-sex attraction and gender confusion than perhaps any man in history. 

At best, Francis engendered LGBTQ+ ambiguity within the Church. At worst, he introduced diabolical lies and permitted them to flourish, countering both Gospel truth and sage, best practices for pastoring the same-sex attracted and gender confused.  

Who knows what role Francis’ infamous, “Who am I to judge (homosexuals)?” in 2013 may have played in accelerating western civilization’s speedy acceptance of same-sex “marriage” in the years immediately following?  

And who knows what role his welcoming of drag queens and transgendered individuals to the Vatican and referring to men dressed as women as “girls” may have played in the spread of the transgender contagion among young people? 

And while “Who am I to judge?” may have been his most famous dangerous quip, there was another in 2018 that was far more treacherous. 

In 2018, Francis allegedly told a young man, “God made you gay.” 

Until the day he died, Francis and his handlers never made a move to deny the statement, so it still hangs like a cloud in the air over the Vatican and the Church around the world.

Francis presented a gospel foreign to Catholic ears. Even to many same-sex-attracted Catholics like me, it was not only foreign; it rang wholly untrue.  

I happened to be in Rome on the day Pope Francis allegedly made this statement. I immediately called it what it was: “The lie of the century.”  

Many of us who experience same-sex attraction and remain chaste had long been troubled by the Pope’s departure from both Church teaching and natural law, through which we each have freedom and life. 

After Pope Francis’ perfidious declaration, “God made you gay,” LifeSiteNews reached out to chaste Catholics who experience same-sex attraction but who choose to live according to the Gospel, not their feelings and attractions.

Join Bishop Strickland’s novena for a holy pope:

Every single one of these chaste same-sex-attracted men and women made clear in their statements to LifeSiteNews: God most certainly did not make them gay. 

The Pope’s “remark disturbed me greatly because, first of all, it’s a lie, and, second of all, he is deceiving millions of people into hell,” said A.A., who did not mince words when speaking to LifeSiteNews. “He just told millions of homosexuals that it’s ok to stay gay and sold them on the devil’s lie. It’s not.”

“I am very grieved over his remark,” said A.A. “It actually makes me sick to my stomach because people will stay trapped and not even know it.

“When I hear those in the Catholic Church say ‘you were born gay,’ I think: My God, they are killing us,” wrote one man who ultimately left the Catholic Church.  

T.B. wondered “just how seriously the Holy Father takes the Church’s teachings on this and other issues of sexual morality … It is deeply disturbing to believe that leaders of the Roman Catholic Church are more concerned about winning people’s affection and approval than the fate of their eternal souls.”

“This certainly makes it a lot harder for those of us who are same-sex attracted and trying to obey the Church’s timeless teachings to do so – or even feel like we are truly welcome in the new, paradigm-shifting Church,” said T.B. “Belonging to a Church whose leaders don’t even believe in its teachings does seem kind of dumb.”

“Furthermore, (this leads) one to gather that homosexual relationships are not only accepted by God but planned by God and should be lived out,” K.Z. told LifeSiteNews. “If we human beings were to act on every desire that we were ‘born with,’ this world would be a scary place to live. I pray we all get back to the Gospel truth and not our own truths or feelings. Why would God call us to live in something that He died for?”

“The Pope and liberal ‘Christian’ theologians/teachers have done more damage to LGBT individuals by poisoning us with their lies, pushing us into further bondage and rebellion against God,” said George Carneal, author of From Queer To Christ. “This destroyed my peace of mind and I attempted suicide over the despair.”  

“God is not the author of confusion,” Corneal continued. “He would not make me gay and then condemn it in His infallible Word. When God opened my eyes to the deception and gave me the healing I needed, I was able to finally walk away from that life. I choose to listen to God, not the Pope.”

Cardinal Sarah is the only conclave participant to counter LGBTQ+ ambiguity and lies of Francis pontificate

There is just one cardinal about to enter the Conclave who is crystal clear, fearless, and uncompromising with the truth when it comes to pastoring those of us who experience same-sex attraction and gender confusion: Cardinal Robert Sarah. 

“I think that the first victims of the LGBT ideology are the persons who experience a homosexual orientation. They are led by its militants to reduce their whole identity to their sexual behavior,” Sarah wrote in 2019. “I beg Catholics who are tempted by homosexuality not to let themselves be shut away in this prison of LGBT ideology. You are a child of God by baptism! Your place is in the Church, like all Christians. And if sometimes the spiritual combat becomes too hard, fraternal charity will support you.”

“As for the churchmen who deliberately entertain ambiguities about the Christian view of homosexual behavior by saying that, morally speaking, all forms of sexuality are strictly equal, I tell them that they are doing the work of the prince of lies and that they lack charity toward the persons involved. Why such statements? Is it to justify their own behavior? Is it because they seek popularity? How can they offer ideological talk to those who ask us for the Word of God?”

He continued:

I would simply like to remind priests about the words of Saint Irenaeus of Lyon in Against heresies: “Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.” Let us beware of becoming accomplices! Those whom we have deceived will demand an accounting in eternity.

What must we do? Ceaselessly recall the divine plan that is expressed in the nature of man and woman. This is an integral part of our mission of evangelization. We do not have the right to abandon those who expect us to show them the way to holiness, including in the area of sexuality.

Those who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion have no greater advocate, no greater pastor, no greater friend than this man who is uncompromising with the truth. 

Cardinal Sarah has warned, “We cannot be more compassionate or merciful than Jesus.”