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Catholic World News News Feature

Italian leaders split in "reparative" work with homosexuals December 24, 2007

The head of the Italian homosexual activist group Arcigay, Aurelio Mancuso, is demanding that the country’s health minister, Livia Turco, intervene to stop the efforts by Catholic psychologists to help homosexuals change their orientation.

The gay activist asked for government intervention after journalist Davide Vari of the Communist newspaper Liberazione investigated an effort to "heal" homosexuals. After 6 months posing as a homosexual, Vari reported on reparative efforts by the president of the Association of Catholic Italian Psychologists and Psychiatrists, Tonino Cantelmi. Cantelmi’s work, supported by the Legionaries of Christ, includes regularly scheduled confession and prayer as means of helping homosexuals to overcome their temptations.

Paola Binetti, a neurophsychiatrist and Democratic party lawmaker associated with the Teodem movement, praised Cantelmi for his "excellent work."

Binetti argued: “Until the 1980s, homosexuality was classified as a pathology. While the homosexual lobby succeeded in changing this, clinical evidence supports the previous classification.”

A fellow Teodem parliamentarian, Mauro Fabris of the UDEUR Party, shot back at Cantelmi's critics, accusing them of "a hateful attempt to accuse the Catholic Church of homophobia.”