In an interview on RTÉ News last night, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described how he “profoundly disagreed” on long held views of the Catholic Church which describe gay people as “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to natural law”.

He went on to reinforce that despite religious beliefs “Natural law is not the law. The law in Ireland is what’s in our Constitution and the law that we pass in our Oireachtas.” He continued “We live in a country that is a republic and we make our laws here. And while we respect people of faith, we respect religion, religious principles don’t decide why there is law in Ireland; don’t decide what the values of our republic are.”

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he wants to relay the message to Pope Francis that many Catholics feel excluded from the church as they are from an LGBT background pic.twitter.com/o2ieMeqBRj

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 23, 2018

Leo Varadkar followed by saying if given the opportunity to speak to Pope Francis, he would relay the message that church exclusion hurts members of society. “There are a lot of people who are devout Catholics who very much believe in their Catholic faith but feel excluded from the church because of the treatment of women and the rules around how women can participate in the church, because they are from an LGBT background or because they are divorced for example, and I know that really hurts them because there’s a conflict over who they are and the rules of the faith which they follow.”

An Taoiseach also insisted he would bring up that fact that the church needed to admit its sins over the vast legacy of child sexual abuse.

The Pope is due to hit the capital tomorrow, bringing the city to a standstill. A huge amount of people resent not only the money being spent by the State on the visit, but the gall of the head of a church visiting a country blighted by its religious abuses.

At the World Meeting of Families yesterday, a Rainbow Choir made up of LGBT+ singers gathered outside in peaceful protest at the exclusion of queer people and their families from the event.

One of the organisers, Ursula Halligan, told the people gathered: “Let God judge, rather than the Catholic church. We are as human as real as anyone else. LGBTI families are as beautiful and as precious as anyone else.”