This guy knows what a Pope does, right?

Pictured: I don't know, just some guy...

Who is he to judge? He's the Pope, isn't that like, his job? In a stunningly progressive move-ok, well, stunningly progressive for the head of an organization that needed 500 years to come to terms with Galileo's suggestion that the Earth went around the sun-Pope Francis said the following to reporters on the flight back to Rome after his South American tour:

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?"

-Pope Fran-really? Ok, Pope Francis

Note: I said, theoretically.

Wah the who? Did he get into those tiny single-serving bottles of communion wine they hand out on airplanes or is he, and by extension the massive, medieval, apparatus of the Catholic Church finally joining the 21st (ok, 20th) century? Eh, sort of. While he maintained that being gay isn't a sin, doing gay stuff still is. So he's ok with gays as long as they lead sexless, unhappy lives. Sigh. Oh well, he's getting there. You know, for an hierarchy consisting of and run by theoretically celibate people, they spend an awful lot of time worrying about other people's sex lives.

For a Pope, Francis's statement is like super-progressive, but for a regular person, not so much. The bar must be a bit lower when your job description was written in the first century because he went on to re-affirm that women have no place in the priesthood because Jesus only had male apostles and besides they'd only get their periods and talk about shoes.

"Pscht...women. Am I right fellas?"

-Pope Francis

But still, the Pope's attitudes are decades ahead of Pat Robertson, who compares gay people to baby-murdering Molech worshippers, and prescribes regular beatings for disobedient wives. On the other hand, he's getting his ass handed to him by retired Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu who said this:

Oh Desmond, you are Tutu much!
(sorry.)

"I would not worship a God who is homophobic, and that is how deeply I feel about this. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place."

-Desmond Tutu,
being awesome