Opinion: john paul II was not great

Hurt is a hard emotion to address. There has been so much of it around in the last week on numerous lesbian and gay websites and internet discussion forums. Sometimes the hurt is expressed as anger, hostility and attack, more often it is articulated as betrayal and bewilderment. Whatever form it takes the response to Pope John Paul's death has exposed the deep wounds he inflicted repeatedly on many lesbian and gay people throughout the world.

Some who posted their views and feelings feel strongly that John Paul waged war against lesbians and gays for daring to exist. And there is truth in that, for he showed little compassion or pastoral care towards gay people during his lifetime. His denouncements of homosexuality are devoid of understanding or humanity and absent of love in any shape or form. "Intrinsically disordered", a "grave depravity" he pronounced us. Those who yearn to have their commitments of love for one another recognised through marriage, he excoriated as part of an "ideology of evil".

They are the kinds of pronouncements that do not leave one with much room to breathe easily as a lesbian or gay Catholic, or simply as a lesbian or gay person.

Perhaps that is why I have been moved by reading contributions by gay people who have wished John Paul peace and who during the last final days of his life wanted only for his pain and discomfort to be relieved. The reach of their own humanity wide enough to embrace this man who never gave them any reason to hope, to feel safe, to feel wanted. Yet, they treated his passing with more caring and respect than he ever displayed in his dealings with them.

Those who have seemed most angry towards the late Pope appear to be younger. Having lived most of their lives under his papacy, the rejection is still raw, the pain too recent to be abated by distance and time. Many of them, are still fighting to have the love of their families. Families, who directed by John Paul's unswerving admonitions exorcised their gay children from the family home, refused them the refuge of unconditional love and in too many cases any love at all. Children and siblings who can never be accepted no matter how hard they strive in life, how well they study, work, build a home or achieve success because in being gay they are "depraved" and "evil" – "intrinsically" so.

I was in a tiny impoverished hamlet in a remote area of Nicaragua in 1992 when I heard my first full-blooded homophobic utterance from the Vatican. A colleague with me had a long wave radio tuned to the World Service. At that exact moment I was preoccupied with readying myself for a trip in the pitch dark to the outside latrine at the back of our small shack when the announcer read the main extracts from a Vatican letter to bishops. The epistle instructed Catholic institutions and organisations against employing homosexuals to work with children. (An instruction which is legitimised in Ireland by the exemption of religious institutions from adhering to the Employment Equality Act 1998.)

It was a surreal moment, on the outskirts of a South American jungle, where, until that broadcast, my worst fear had been catching dysentery and making enough noise in getting to the "toilet" to scare off the large rats common to the area know as "zorros". Something would not compute. My brain did not seem capable of digesting the information just received. My colleague's aghast look confirmed what I had just heard. John Paul II had declared holy war on me and my kind. There have been other Vatican statements of more vile homophobic content since, but like having your heart broken it is always the first time that is etched deepest in memory.

John Paul II was not "Great", he did not free the slaves, end poverty, bring peace to the world, eschew wealth and walk in the shoes of the fisherman nor did he single-handedly bring down Communism, not even in Poland despite what has been said and written. He was a man, a flawed man who got some things right and a lot of things wrong. He brought as much pain as he alleviated, he wrought despair as well as hope. He had too much power and did not always use it beneficially. And the world is full of such men.

John Paul II was, despite the myriad of indignities his words have heaped on gay people, the Catholic Church's Canute, foolishly believing he could hold back the advancing tide of our lesbian and gay self-belief and our natural rights to justice and equality. The year after I returned from Nicaragua, Ireland decriminalised homosexuality. Learning to defend ourselves against those who would hurt us may be the best legacy John Paul could ever have left us. Keep the faith.