The Rome LGBTQ+ Pride Parade celebrated its 30th anniversary in June as tens of thousands of people in brightly coloured outfits marched through the Italian capital waving banners, dancing and singing as they marked gay rights and poked fun at Pope Francis, who had to issue an apology last month after Italian media quoted unnamed bishops saying that Francis jokingly used the term “f**gotness” while speaking in Italian during a meeting.
Pope Francis had used the term in reaffirming the Vatican’s ban on allowing gay men to enter seminaries and be ordained priests. He reportedly repeated the word a second time in a meeting with Rome priests this week.
Many of the signs and banners at the parade made fun over a recent comment made by the pontiff.
“Attention, from here on high levels of f**gotry,” read a sign on a large motorcycle driven by a woman in a rainbow-coloured hat at the front of the parade.
A man dressed up as Pope Francis held a sign reading “there is too much f**gotry in this parade.”
Meloni’s Brother of Italy party manifesto states it is against marriage equality, gay parents adopting children, and surrogate pregnancies. Last year, her far-right government limited recognition of parental rights to the biological parent only in families with same-sex parents.
A woman held up a sign reading, “I don’t like Meloni, but I like melons and red hair.”
Another sign made fun of General Roberto Vannacci, a newly elected member of Parliament for the European Party with the right-wing League party. Vannacci was fired by Italy’s defence minister after writing a book deemed offensive to women, gays and Blacks.
“If according to Vannacci the LGBTQ+ is a minority … he has never met the seminarians of Pope Francis.”
