Kim Davis had private meeting with Pope Francis; UPDATE: HRC responds
Controversial Kentucky clerk Kim Davis apparently did meet privately with Pope Francis, a Vatican spokesman seemed to confirm on Wednesday to ABC News. Davis and her lawyer, Mat Staver, of Liberty Counsel, had previously claimed that she had met the pope last Thursday during his visit to Washington, D.C. Davis had arrived in the city to attend the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, where she received a Cost of Discipleship award.
“The Holy See is aware of the reports of Kim Davis meeting with the Holy Father,” Father Benedettini of the Vatican Press office. “The Vatican does not confirm the meeting, nor does it deny the meeting. There will be no further information given.”
Yet an hour later, Benedettini issued another statement: “I do not deny that the meeting took place, but I will not comment on it further.”
In an interview with ABC, Davis said meeting the Pope with her husband has inspired her to continue to fight for her religious beliefs.
“I was crying. I had tears coming out of my eyes,” said Davis. “I”m just a nobody, so it was really humbling to think he would want to meet or know me.”
Davis, who has reveled in the spotlight and enjoyed celebrity status among social conservatives for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, met the pope with her husband at the Vatican Embassy. Days later, while flying back to Rome, the pope defended — though without mentioning specific names — the concept of a government official refusing to issue marriage licenses if doing so violates their religious conscience.
“Just knowing the pope is on track with what we’re doing, and agreeing, you know, kind of validates everything,” Davis told ABC News. “I’ve weighed the cost, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”
As reported by National Public Radio, Davis’ lawyers claim the pope gave two rosaries to the Davises, who will give them to Davis’ parents, who are Catholic.
Confirmation of the meeting was slow in coming, due in part to the Vatican’s initial statement neither confirming nor denying the meeting took place. But Davis and her legal team’s claims have been subject to skepticism, particularly after the liberal website Think Progress questioned the veracity of a photograph that purportedly showed a 100,000-person prayer rally in Peru on behalf of Davis.
The picture, which was shown at last week’s Values Voter Summit in Washington as evidence of the support Davis was receiving from across the world, was later identified as having been uploaded to Facebook in May, well before the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality and before Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to any couples in Rowan County.
After defending the photo’s authenticity over the weekend and on Monday, Liberty Counsel later reversed their claim that there was an organized prayer rally, saying only that some people in Peru prayed for her. The organization pointed to Peruvian Congressman Julio Rosas as the source of the photo and tweeted to Think Progress that they were just repeating his claim.
“When some questioned whether such a large event occurred, Liberty Counsel sought verification this past Saturday and yesterday,” Liberty Counsel said in a statement. “It now appears that while prayer meetings did occur throughout Peru, the photograph presented to Mat Staver was an honest mistake and was of a different Christian assembly in a soccer field.”
Staver also insisted to Think Progress that Davis has received other forms of support for her stance.
“Make no mistake, however, that there is widespread support for Kim Davis,” he said. “Last week she was recognized by many people as she walked through the Philadelphia, New York LaGuardia, and Washington, D.C. Reagan airports. People gave her a thumbs up sign or verbally expressed support for Kim Davis. While she has obvious detractors, Kim Davis also has wide support.”
Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), issued a statement expressing the organization’s disappointment over the pontiff’s meeting with Davis. He also called Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America, to express disappointment that Pope Francis declined to meet with LGBT faithful, despite being invited to join more than 100 LGBT Catholics and HRC staffers to discuss their estrangement from the Church.
“We hope that this is just a troubling mistake, but if these reports are true, this is a disappointing end to a historic trip,” Griffin said in a statement. “It would come as a shock to all those who were inspired by Pope Francis’s call for greater tolerance and inclusion if he were to lend support to a public employee who has become synonymous with discrimination against LGBT people. And, it would be most disappointing to the dozens of LGBT faithful who gathered to welcome Pope Francis to Washington, D.C., and whose request for a meeting was declined.”
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