❝ The gay community has long been marginalized by the Catholic community, German Roman Catholic Cardinal Reinhard Marx said last week, calling on the church to apologize.

On Sunday, Pope Francis obliged, extending his apologies to all disenfranchised groups for the harm and offense the church may have caused.

❝ “I think that the Church not only should apologize … to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologize to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by – being forced to – work. It must apologize for having blessed so many weapons.”…

“We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this treatment of gays, but we must ask for forgiveness, not just apologize! Forgiveness! Lord, it is a word we forget so often!” he said.

❝ …On Sunday, Francis repeated his comments from 2013, extending them past himself to say, “Who are we to judge?”

“The questions is: If a person who has that situation, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?” Francis said.

Yet, we live in societies all too often called to judge others by standards, definitions, ideology centuries out of date. If someone as deeply tied to the past as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church can find his way into the 21st Century and move willingly towards a modern understanding of human sexuality — what excuse remains for those who still choose hatred and fear.