VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Thursday defended a request for changes to a draft law in Italy aimed at combating homophobia, saying it was not an interference in another country’s domestic affairs and was not seeking to block it.
The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said the draft law was too “vague and uncertain” about what would be criminalized.
The leak this week of an internal diplomatic “verbal note” given to the Italian ambassador to the Vatican on June 17 caused a political furor and dominated Italian newspapers.
Even Prime Minister Mario Draghi, a practicing Catholic, intervened to defend Italy as a lay state with a sovereign parliament.
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