Recently, Pope Francis called on the church to apologize to gays and others for years of poor or abusive treatment. It was a signature moment for this Pope who has reached out to marginalized groups and rejected many of the long-entrenched positions and habits (and excesses) of the Vatican. However, his words were given an interesting spin by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who had a remarkably heated exchange with CNN’s Chris Cuomo and refused to apologize to gays. The video is below.

During a recent return flight from Argentina, the Pope said that

“the church not only should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended, but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having blessed many weapons . . . The church must say it is sorry for not having behaved as it should many times, many times — when I say ‘the church,’ I mean we Christians, because the church is holy; we are the sinners . . . We Christians must say we are sorry.”

Donohue rejected the notion of an apology and added “As a matter of fact, I want an apology from gays. I’ve been assaulted by gays. I’ve never assaulted a gay person in my entire life.”

He criticized CNN and said “Your producers only want to talk about LGBT,” he charged. “I don’t care what gay people do. I don’t want to have a lifestyle thrusted in my face though. That’s a different kind of thing altogether.”

Then came Donohue’s interpretation of the Pope’s remarks that he meant to say that Christians could “condemn certain manifestations” of sexual behavior “though he didn’t complete the sentence.”

Here is the video:

What do you think?