Former Irish premier Leo Varadkar has praised Pope Francis for reaching out to the LGBT+ community, saying it made him feel “more comfortable” going to church services.
The 88-year-old pontiff died on Easter Monday after a cerebral stroke that led to a coma and irreversible heart failure, the Vatican said.
His funeral will take place on Saturday.
Mr Varadkar, who was taoiseach from 2017 to 2020 and again from 2022 to 2024, met Francis during the Pope’s visit to Ireland in 2018.
The former Fine Gael introduced his partner, Matt, to the Pope during their meeting.
In 2023, Francis stated that laws criminalising homosexuality were “unjust” and that “being homosexual isn’t a crime”.
The pontiff visited Ireland for two days in August 2018, which included a visit to Knock, a meeting with victims of clerical abuse, and a visit to a homeless centre run by the Capuchin Fathers.
“I think the way he reached out to groups like ours, like LGBT people, did matter and certainly made me feel more comfortable going to church services,” Mr Varadkar told RTE.
“One thing he did, which I think was significant, was he spoke out against criminalisation of gay and lesbian people.
“In Ireland, it’s easy to forget that while there are 30 countries where gay people can get married, there are 70 where it’s still a crime.
“For the Pope to speak out against that in places like Africa, is actually a real significance – and bear in mind, at the moment, in politics around the world there are people who claim that God is on their side while they try to reduce the rights of LGBT people, while they try to treat migrants badly, while they try to deny climate action.
“Having a pope, the head of the largest Christian church, saying that refugees should be sheltered, saying that our planet was sick and that we needed to act to save it, saying that LGBT people should not be criminalised, that that did matter.
“I do hope that successor is of a similar mind.”
Mr Varadkar said during Francis’s visit to Ireland, relations between the Catholic Church and the state “weren’t very good”, referring to the scandals in mother and baby institutions as well as the clerical sex abuse that took place across industrial schools.
“We also had been misaligned from the church in a lot of ways, on a lot of issues,” he added.
“We had the abortion referendum, for example, earlier that year. So relations on lots of levels weren’t brilliant.
“But I think I saw it, and I think Pope Francis saw it as well, as an opportunity maybe for a bit of a reset, to kind of shake hands again, if you like, and agreed to have a more equal relationship.
“One that was more mutually respectful, one where the Church wasn’t in charge of that relationship anymore in the way it was for most of our history.
“But also one where we were saying back that the Church has a place in our society.”
Francis led an open-air Sunday mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, where pilgrims’ attendance was a fraction of the million people who greeted Pope John Paul II at the same spot in 1979.
During the Phoenix Park service, the Pope asked for “forgiveness for the abuses in Ireland” and for “pardon for all the abuses committed in various types of institutions”.
Mr Varadkar said that while it was a “significant gesture”, he believes more could have been done.
“One thing I found very informal, bear in mind he’s head of church – he’s also a monarch, head of government, head of state of the Vatican City – and obviously his huge responsibilities, but was very colloquial in his language, very informal,” Mr Varadkar added.
“He made the whole thing seem very relaxed, which I thought was great because I was a little bit nervous at first, and then we got to talk about different topics.
“Now the topics would have been flagged in advance. I was keen to talk to him about some things on behalf of the survivors of abuse and talk about the institutions that we were investigating and the compensation packages and so on.
“He definitely listened, definitely heard, and was sort of keen that we follow it up between the two sides at official level.
“One thing he did, though, which I think was very significant, was that he asked for forgiveness.
“I was there at the mass in Phoenix Park where he did that, and I think that was a significant gesture.
“Could more have been done? Can more still be done? I think so, but I don’t remember a pope previously, I might be wrong, but I don’t remember a pope previously confessing to the sin of what had happened and seek forgiveness. I don’t think that was nothing.”
