This is my best attempt at a translation of the Pope's words.

I first used a Firefox plug-in Italian-to-English software tranalator on the Italien original. I then repeating the process on a German version of the text also posted on the Vatican WebSite. I then compared the two English versions and reconciled them.

Subsequently, the Times of London published an English translation, and I further corrected my version on that basis. Finally, an Italian speaking priest friend provided a translation and I have largely adopted his phraeseology.

You will see that what the Pope says is pretty much anodyne, profoundly uncontentious and impeccably orthodox. My only issue with what he Pope says is what exactly one might mean by "respecting the fact that human beings are male and female" and what exactly the Logos of God is "speaking" in this obvious fact.

The news reports entirely misrepresented the Pope on this occasion. Whoever started this story clearly had a malign intent. Words have been put into the Pope's mouth that he simply didn't say - unless the text posted on the Vatican WebSite is itself a misrepresentation of his words!

I am pretty sure that the Pope is amazed and taken aback by the reaction to his words.

Pope Benedict XVI said:

Last weekend, I had business in Leicester. On the Saturday morning, I was standing in front of the hotel lift\ with my partner, in silence, when a young (I’d say mid to late twenties) Caucasian male of slight build and slightly below average height, casually dressed (but not unkempt) with short (but not cropped) black hair approached and accosted me: “Are you going to a gay party, up there?” His voice was slurred and strongly accented (I didn’t recognize the accent) and I presumed that he was either drunk or otherwise intoxicated.

I replied to the effect that I was not going to any kind of party.

He then insisted “but you are gay, aren’t you?”

I replied that I was – not that it was any of his business.

He then said that I was a “bandit” and that I should have a better taste in boy friends. He also said that my breath “stank of cock,” and inquired about my practice regarding “bumming”my partner. He informed me at some point that “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

I asked him if he believed in God, then and told him that I was a Catholic. He didn’t reply to this except by informing me that he “knew where to put his bits”.

I asked “where might that be?” but he gave no reply.

At some point during the interchange I have summarized, I asked the hotel receptionist to call the police and after a certain hesitation she did so. She had previously asked the person in question to leave – with increasing seriousness.

The Caucasian male was accompanied by a plump, long haired, Caucasian female in her mid twenties and attired in a skimpy black dress. She became increasingly apologetic towards me as the interchange progressed. I told her that her acquaintance’s behaviour was not her fault and suggested that she chose her friends with more circumspection in future.

She repeatedly urged her acquaintance (I presume “boy-friend”, or partner - but not husband, from the way in which she addressed him) to leave at least three times, saying that he was “showing her up”, but he was very loath to do so. In the end she hit him with her handbag across his face. The pair then left the hotel.

The hotel receptionist told me that the couple had turned up off the street inquiring as to the cost of a room for the night, but had decided that the hotel was too expensive and had asked for a cab to be called for them.

The police interviewed me later on and told me that the affair clearly constituted a “section five” offence against the Public Order Act and would pursue it to the best of their ability.

Yesterday, I visited the "Faith Movement's Summer Session" at the invitation of my godson. I was not impressed.

The conservative group, "Faith", started out as an honest attempt by its English founder Fr Holloway to connect orthodox Catholic theology with modern scientific thought. His book "Catholicism, a New Synthesis" tried to reconcile his own inadequate understanding of mid C20th physics and evolutionary biology with his somewhat ideosynchratic (but pretty orthodox) take on Catholic theology and philosophy. I never found it at all convincing, myself.

More recently, "Faitth" has transformed itself into a neo-conservative organisation that simply apes the official teaching of the Contemporary Magisterium without any concern for context or any consciousness of its limitations, frailty or falibility. Their typical attitude is that the Magisterium has never and could never teach error in any way or degree and that any semblence of it having done so results from a misreading of whatever teaching is in question.

See:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pharseas.world/OldAndNew.html

"Faith" is obsessed with only one aspect of Catholic life: sex, marriage and procreation. To a degree this is understandible, as these matters are of burgeoning practical importance to the youngsters that it typically recruits, and - as my Godson says - they find these issues very confusing. "Faith" is increadingly buying in to the pernicious "Theology of the Body" invented and peddled by pope John Paul II.

See:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pharseas.world/SnakeOil.html

In this view "Marriage" and "Sex" and "Romance" are at the centre of the Christian Gospel. The whole thrust of God's redemptive act (as it were) is to be understood in terms of a Divine Love Affair with Man aimed at the Marriage of Christ with His Church. Hence Marriage [not love - but in any case the two are understood to be the same, any-how: all real love has to be presented as some variety of marriage and every vocation within the Church must be undestood as a variation on matrimony] is the most crucial of all the sacraments because it alone represents the central truth of the Gospel.

A religious sister got herself into quite a bit of trouble when explaining that religious often understand their vocation as being "married to Christ". All of a sudden she realised that she was suggesting that monks should understand themselves as being "brides of Christ" [which is an authentic image that is not unknown in the tradition]
and decided that this wasn't at an appropriate idea. She stopped in her tracks and said that male religious should rather think of themselves as "just friends" of Jesus, like the Apostles. Ho, hum!

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Saint George of Cappodocia

Nothing whatsoever can be established about St. George as a historical figure. Nethertheless, no one reading early texts about George can fail to notice their homoeroticism. George at one stage is about to marry, but is prevented by Christ:

"[George] did not know that Christ was keeping him as a pure virginal bridegroom for himself".
[E.W. Budge: "The Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappodocia": The Coptic Texts,
(London: D. Nutt, 1888) page 282]

Later on Christ welcomes George into Heaven with bridal imagery: -

"And the Lord said to the blessed George, Hail, My George! Hail beloved of myself and of My Angels …. I swear by My right hand, Oh my beloved one that I will establish a covenant with thee that when thou shalt bow thyself upon thy spiritual face in heaven and shall come with all they congregation to worship the holy Trinity, all the saints know thee by reason of the honour which I will show thee, O My beloved… "
[E.W. Budge: "The Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappodocia": The Coptic Texts,
(London: D. Nutt, 1888) 320-21]

In these texts, here from Coptic versions, George is presented as the bridegroom of Christ. Bridal imagery is quite common in discourse about Christ, but usually male saints are made into "brides of Christ", but with George homo-gender marital imagery is used.

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"Faith" is also characterised by slovenly (but not quite abusive) liturgy. The worse that "Faith" priests do is neglect to wear chasubles when concelebrating the Holy Eucharist, but they have no real liturgical sense and celebrate the Holy Mysteries more like a school-lesson or a conversation with the congregation than as any means to a kind of Divine Epiphany.

See:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pharseas.world/WesCathMass.html

I was glad to escape the claustraphobic, anti-liturgical and anti-intellectual atmosphere of the meeting.