With one slur, the Pope has shown his true colours on homosexuality

In the Christian gospels, Jesus talks a great deal about the good society, and how individuals should treat each other. One-sentence summaries are necessarily crude but, in essence, he preaches to never treat others in a way that you wouldn’t want to be treated yourself.

Pope Francis might do well to reflect on that core teaching in the light of reports that, in a recent meeting of Italian bishops, he referred to gay men in the Vatican as frociaggine, an offensive Italian collective noun that roughly translates as “f*****ry”.

It is enough to make all Catholics – many, like me, just about clinging to mass-going after the paedophile priests’ scandal and cover-up – hang their heads in despair.