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Two men photobomb coverage of live TV coverage of American Pope Leo XIV
Habemus gay osculum! We have a gay kiss!
A gay couple in St. Peter's Square photobombed a kiss on live TV after Cardinal Robert Prevost was announced as Pope Leo XIV on Thursday. The pair was captured on the Vatican’s live feed of the historic event, and the suspected couple later re-created the historic smooch in a post to social media.
“Habemus Papam!” the captioning read on the Vatican’s TV coverage of the announcement of the new pope. “We have a Pope!”
As the camera panned the crowd celebrating in St. Peter's Square, the men celebrated with a quick but very public peck on the lips.
A later photo appeared to show the same couple re-creating their kiss amid the crowds in St. Peter's Square and was posted to the social media of one of the suspected smooches.
The kiss seemed an appropriate way of welcoming Pope Leo XIV, as the late Pope Francis was the most LGBTQ-affirming pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
Related: Pope Leo XIV criticized Trump and JD Vance on social media
Leo's thoughts on the LGBTQ+ community have not been widely reported, but at a meeting of bishops in 2012, “he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered ‘sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel," The New York Times reports. At the time, the new pope specifically mentioned the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
You can watch the Vatican’s full coverage of the event below.
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