The marketplace, not elected officials, should decide whether a company should open an outlet in a particular location, said San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller.

"I share their concern for the welfare of both the child and the parents, but we disagree about the best way to treat them with both respect and compassion."

“To generalize, to look at a whole category of people is never legitimate,” said Archbishop Charles Scicluna, one of the Vatican’s point man in the fight against sex abuse. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are “human conditions,” he said, adding, “they are not something that predisposes to sin.”

Frederic Martel boldly told reporters at a press conference at the Foreign Press Association in Rome on Feb. 20 that “the great majority” of the more than 200 members of the College of Cardinals are leading double lives.

The central thesis of the 576-page book is that “the more a prelate is homophobic, the more likely it is that he is himself gay.”

His lectures mixed paradox and wit, eccentricity and nonsense while spreading the war cry of beauty amid the agonizing ugliness of 19th-century American dress and décor.