Abbot says no gay pride event at Mt St Benedict

The head of the Mt St Benedict Catholic monastery in St Augustine contacted a gay pride/LGBT group asking it to relocate a LGBT flag-raising and meet-and-greet event it planned to have on the church's grounds.

The event was scheduled to take place yesterday morning just outside the monastery's main church and the organisers did not have permission to do so. The LGBT event was also due to start only 15 minutes after mass.

PrideTT, the organiser of the event, was calling on members of the public, in support of the LGBT movement, to meet up and hoist a rainbow-coloured flag in the church car park.

Members of the RC church who saw the event's promotional post on Facebook told Sunday Newsday that beyond being scandalised by the post they felt it very intolerable to host an event counter to the church's beliefs on church-owned soil.

"The LGBT community is always claiming that religious people are insensitive and are the ones who force beliefs on them. But here we have an organised event irrespective of Catholic beliefs that was due to transpire (sic) at 7 am, which as far as I know is the time Catholics would worship in the church only metres away...It is quite disturbing and disrespectful.

"Yet I love all of the LGBT people and pray for them daily," said one of the baffled Catholics.

PrideTT told Sunday Newsday no harm or disrespect was intended in the selection of the location. The event organiser said the group assumed using the car park was all right and hence did not seek approval.

"We assumed that it was a public space and that we could have our event there. They thought it was an accessible, well known place to the public located on the East-West Corridor," said the organiser.

The abbot, who is in charge of the church, got wind of the event and contacted the organiser directly asking him to cancel the event, saying the location is for prayer and not public events of any sort.

The organiser of the event said he understood the abbot and Catholics who were worried and the group has conceded to the request to hold the event elsewhere, since the car park is in fact private property. The organiser said the abbot's request was made kindly and he did not mention the nature of the event.