Yes, the Pope met a gay priest — that doesn’t mean Catholic doctrine is about to change

Well, the Vatican isn’t the place I know a bit if the sexual orientation of the Polish priest who’s just outed himself as gay wasn’t known to everyone from the Swiss Guard to the cleaners. But still, for Mgr Krzysztof Charamsa to declare in a press conference not just that he’s homosexual but actually in a sexual relationship with his boyfriend Eduard – who looked a little less dazzlingly pleased with himself than the priest – was not just a gigantic thumbed nose to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for which he worked, but to the synod on the family which is just starting. One of the issues for the synod is the way the church engages with homosexual Catholics – though I do realise that this turn of phrase suggests that gay people aren’t actually part of the church: they are, as Mgr Charamsa has flamboyantly pointed out.