A village priest in Andalucia has become the first Catholic Church official in Spain to publicly declare he is homosexual after doing so in a gay magazine.
"I thank God for being gay," said the headline in the February edition of Madrid gay magazine Zero, which published an interview with 39-year-old Father Jose Montero.
Fr Montero, photographed with a neatly trimmed beard and an earring in one ear, said he discovered he was gay eight years ago when he fell in love.
The priest has a parish in the village of Valverde del Camino in the Huelva province of southwestern Spain. He told Zerohe still loved the Church but was disgusted by the "silence and guilt" that the church imposed on its homosexual members.
"You have to defend such issues from inside. It's impossible from outside. And the love of the institution [the Church] is an essential factor in this internal struggle," he explained.
"I don't feel resentful or that I am morally defective. On the contrary, I feel fine. I love the Church and love has to be belligerent," Mr Montero said.
Zerobroke new ground in September 2000 when it published the first declaration of homosexuality by an officer in the Spanish army.
AFP