Yesterday, actor Rory Cowan spoke to RTE’s Liveline yesterday saying that Irish society shouldn’t care about the Catholic church’s views on the LGBT+ community.

Cowan said that Varadkar saying that he might raise the issue with the Pope “if the opportunity arises”, gives the church more relevance than they have.

“It’s an awful waste of time because it’s not going to change their attitudes, and again it’s making their attitudes relevant. Just ignore it and just say ‘ah to hell with you who cares'”, Cowan said.

“If you disagree with the Roman Catholic Church’s attitudes towards gay people or gay families, then just ignore it. Don’t go to it, don’t donate money to it. Just live your life and ignore it.

“We should stop making the Church relevant to gay rights and gay issues. Ignore it and make it irrelevant.

“I’m 59 and I never gave a damn what the Roman Catholic Church thought about me being gay.

“Their attitude is totally irrelevant to me and my life. I couldn’t care less what it thinks about LGBTQ people or their rights. We don’t need the Church’s approval or acceptance of us.

“We only need the laws of the land to accept us as full and equal citizens and we need to be protected under those laws. And we have that now. We don’t need approval or acceptance by the Church,” the former Mrs Brown’s Boys actor said.

Catholic Church Criticism

Cowan’s comments come after months of knockbacks for the LGBT+ catholic community and their involvement in the upcoming Papal visit at the end of August.

All references to same-sex relationships were removed from promotional materials, pro-LGBT+ Catholic groups are being blocked from attending a WMF event in the RDS and most recently almost 10,000 have signed a petition to boot pro-LGBT+ priest Father James Martin from speaking during the Irish Papal visit.

This marginalisation of the Catholic LGBT+ community has come under heavy criticism from a number of politicians with former Irish President Mary McAleese expressing her disappointment.

Dr McAleese made her most recent comments on the upcoming visit as she was presented with the Vanguard Award at the Gaze Film Festival stating she is hopeful the churches beliefs and teachings on LGBT+ people would change:

“The church has to take responsibility for the damage inflicted on generations of men, women and children by the evil teaching that it promotes around homosexuality”, said McAleese.