The women’s rights protest group Femen gathered outside the Vatican to launch a topless protest against Pope Benedict XVI’s stance on gay adoption and same sex marriage.
Benedict was leasing the Angelus prayer from the window of his apartment in St Peter’s Square while a scuffle broke out between the Femen protesters and police.
Four members of the group whipped off their t-shirts to reveal the slogan ‘In Gay We Trust’ painted across their bodies. the then began chanting ‘Homophobes shut up!’ before being hauled away by the local constablery.
The protest was sparked after the Vatican paper L’Osservatore Romano published a response to an Italian court’s rejection of an appeal by a father who was worried his son would not have a balanced upbringing if he lived with his mother and her female partner.
Adriano Pessina, director of bioethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart commented in the newspaper report that children frequently grow up in difficult circumstances without a mother or father. “But no one believes that these situations should be created just because in some cases they don’t cause damage.
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.”