Italy: St. Joseph Replaced By a Woman in a Nativity Scene

The priest made no secret of the reason for this substitution. He wanted to manifest “a Church of the excluded and not of exclusion.” He explains: “Around exclusion, it is the worthy survival of billions of human beings that is at stake. With the primacy of the economy, we have built a type of society which, to survive, needs to exclude, to push back into the margins or into the sea,” added Don Vitaliano, in reference to migrants coming from Africa by boat.

His speech then turns to the Church: “Exclusion is not only practiced within civil society: even the Church often practices exclusion by relegating to the margins the authentic witnesses of Jesus Christ who traced new paths on which the last, the poor of God, immediately begin to walk, and on which, on the contrary, the right-thinking stumble, scandalized.”

He concludes on this point: “It is the logic of inclusiveness which is the future of the Church; a Church that does not marginalize, does not use the heavy ax of judgment against anyone, ‘a Church of the excluded and not of exclusion’ as Msgr. Jacques Gaillot said, capable of welcoming, of taking all the world within it.”

Then he moves on to the family: “There is no longer a traditional family. Today there are other types of families. In youth groups, in catechism, come the children of divorced people, single people, but also homosexual couples. And we must treat them all the same, with respect. It is Pope Francis himself who says that the Church must not exclude anyone,” explains the priest.

Don Vitaliano then points out “the contempt, even by sectors of the Catholic Church against the ‘rainbow families.’” For this reason, he continues, “there are two mothers in the in the nativity scene;” I put in a ‘rainbow couple [LGBT, ed.], because they also represent a type of family. And we must take this into account because, he repeats, it is also for them that Jesus Christ became incarnate.”

Reactions in Italy

The Capostello di Marcogliano Nativity scene and its priest, close to LGBT groups, immediately triggered the reaction of senator Maurizio Gasparri, member of Forza Italia, who considered the priest's initiative meaningless, even describing it as “blasphemous.”

“A gesture that leaves you speechless, yet another act of outright blasphemy, with the removal of St. Joseph and, we must imagine, obvious allusions to Our Lady, as we are used to seeing in many parades claiming rights and tolerance but forgetting to respect the Catholic world. Let the priest reflect and devote himself to rights and inclusion without falling into easy provocations which offend sensitivity and which have nothing to do with his mission,” concluded the head of the Forza Italia group in the Senate.  

Senator Gasparri spontaneously used the right word: blasphemy. First of all, there is a diversion from a simple historical point of view. Thus, while the Vatican nativity scene reproduces the first nativity scene of St. Francis, a living nativity scene, Don Vitaliano’s distortion of the truth show his contempt for the Gospel.

But above all it is his manipulation of a sacred symbol: the Holy Family, as it was willed by God and presented as the model for all families in the writings of the Magisterium and the Popes. This symbol is despised, reduced to the rank of a propaganda instrument for ideologies contrary to revealed morality.

Finally, it is a most gross insult to the Mother of God and her husband, which can only arouse the indignation of every true son of this Mother of Heaven, and who demands reparation. Let us hope, with no great conviction, that the local bishop will intervene to demand the removal of this nativity scene and request the reparation due to the honor of Our Lady.