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Kim Davis has become a heroine to US same-sex marriage opponents, after she landed in jail for six days for refusing to issue licenses for gay marriage, which the US Supreme Court legalised nationwide in June. Photo: AP

Pope’s support for clerk who denied gay marriage licences fits theme of religious freedom

Pope Francis
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The pope’s hitherto clandestine meeting with Kim Davis, the current heroine of conservative Christianity in the US, has come as a surprise - and a blow - to those who would claim Francis as a standard-bearer of liberalism.

But the 15-minute meeting between the leader of the world’s Catholics and the county clerk from Kentucky who went to jail rather than add her official signature to same-sex marriage licences was entirely in keeping with one of the key themes of the pontiff’s six-day US tour: religious freedom.

Davis, a Pentecostal Apostolic Christian, met the pope at the Vatican embassy in Washington DC last Thursday after Francis had delivered his speech to Congress and before he left the capital for New York. The news of the meeting broke on Wednesday, two days after the pope landed back in Rome after a trip which delighted liberals but disappointed many conservative Catholics.

Davis described the encounter to ABC News : “I put my hand out and he reached and he grabbed it, and I hugged him and he hugged me. And he said, ‘Thank you for your courage’.”

During the meeting, the pope gave Davis two rosaries, one black and one red, her lawyer said. Photo: EPA

She wept at the encounter: “I had tears coming out of my eyes. I’m just a nobody, so it was really humbling to think he would want to meet or know me.”

During the brief meeting, the pontiff reportedly praised Davis for her courage, asked her to pray for him and presented rosaries to her and her husband Joe. The Vatican did not deny the fact of the meeting but offered no elaboration nor comment.

Both the delay in news emerging about the meeting, and its brevity, are significant. Davis is likely to have been asked to maintain silence about her audience so the pope’s historic US trip would not be derailed into a distracting debate about the county clerk’s ongoing case. The length of the meeting suggests that there was little or no discussion between the two of the specifics of the case, but a more general acknowledgement of her stand in the cause of religious liberty.

The meeting with Davis was not the only gesture the pope made relating to the issue of religious freedom while in the US. Francis also made an unscheduled (although instantly publicised) visit to a Little Sisters of the Poor community in Washington, in a clear gesture of support for their long legal battle over Obamacare.

Demonstrators protest Rowan County clerk Kim Davis as she attended a contempt of court hearing last month. Photo: Reuters

The order of Catholic nuns, which runs 30 nursing homes across the country, are fighting the requirement under the Affordable Care Act for employers to include contraception provision in health insurance. Their case is has become another emblem of the religious liberty movement.

And the pontiff mentioned religious freedom in all his major speeches in the US, telling Congress, for example, that “efforts to build a just society should “respect [Catholics’] deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty. That freedom remains one of America’s most precious possessions.”

On the papal plane back to Rome, he was asked by a reporter whether it was permissible to defy the law in defence of religious freedom.

In his response, the pope significantly spoke of “conscientious objection” rather than the banner phrase adopted by conservative Christians, “religious liberty”. He said: “I can say the conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right.”

 

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