Church reconciles with gay altar server

[struggle4progress]

Bishop of Peterborough preaches tolerance to divided parish
Published On Sun Jun 06 2010

Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter

COBOURG – As the organ backed a spirited choir, a gay man carried the Eucharist down the aisle of a troubled church to the altar — an altar at which he can no longer serve.

It was a sign of reconciliation between a celibate but openly gay man, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peterborough, which he had earlier taken to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal over allegations that his rights were trampled by a bishop and 12 parishioners whose actions, he said, led to his removal from his voluntary role as an altar server at St. Michael’s Parish of Cobourg ...

“Nobody has the right to humiliate or slander their brother and sister,” Bishop Nicola De Angelis told the parishioners, some of whom are still calling for the transfer of their priest, Father Allan Hood, to another church over the whole Corcoran affair ...

“In their most recent letter to the Bishop this group had threatened to go public with their complaints if the Bishop did not remove the two gay servers from the altar,” the complaint noted, adding: “In their letters the group has tried to establish that I am married to my same-sex partner, that I am an active homosexual leading an openly homosexual lifestyle and they implied that I may be in a relationship with Father Hood" ...

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/819850--church-reconciles-with-gay-altar-server