Exhibit B: Set Yourselves on Fire & We Can Talk About 'Persecution'

Gay Activists Remember Vatican Protestor

from IC Wales

A small group of US gay rights advocates gathered outside the Vatican yesterday in memory of an Italian man who burned himself to death to protest the church’s treatment of homosexuals.

Alfredo Ormando, a 40-year-old from Palermo, Sicily, set himself on fire in St. Peter’s on Jan. 13, 1998. He died of his injuries 10 days later.

In his suicide note, Ormando wrote at length of how he felt rejected by the church and the pain it had caused him. To many, he has become a symbol of what they see as the intolerance of Italian society and the Roman Catholic church.

Vatican teaching holds that homosexual acts are ”intrinsically disordered.” Pope Benedict XVI in June condemned same-sex unions as anarchic “pseudo-matrimony.”