Bishop Morlino with Pope Francis (bishop robert c. morlino/facebook)

A Catholic Bishop has said that homosexuality is just as sinful as paedophilia.

Robert Morlino, Bishop of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, conflated the abuse and rape of thousands of children by figures within the Church to gay sex, extramarital relations, a cleric having sex and the abuse of authority.

Last week, US Cardinal Raymond Burke blamed sexual abuse scandals on a “homosexual culture” within the Church, adding that homosexuality was a “tendency that is disordered” and should be “purified at the root.”

Like Morlino, he was responding to a grand jury’s report which indicated that thousands of boys and girls in Pennsylvania had been raped and sexually abused by more than 300 Catholic priests.

The Wisconsin Bishop, who has held his position for 15 years, wrote in a letter published by the Madison Catholic Herald that “we have refused to call a sin a sin – and we have excused sin in the name of a mistaken notion of mercy.”

Referring to the Pennsylvania report, he added that “in the specific situations at hand, we are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics.

“We’re also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests, bishops, and cardinals.

“We are talking about acts and actions which are not only in violation of the sacred promises made by some, in short, sacrilege, but also are in violation of the natural moral law for all.

“To call it anything else would be deceitful and would only ignore the problem further,” he added.

The Bishop continued: “There has been a great deal of effort to keep separate acts which fall under the category of now-culturally-acceptable acts of homosexuality from the publically-deplorable acts of paedophilia.

“That is to say, until recently the problems of the Church have been painted purely as problems of paedophilia — this despite clear evidence to the contrary.

“It is time to be honest that the problems are both and they are more.”

He added: “To fall into the trap of parsing problems according to what society might find acceptable or unacceptable is ignoring the fact that the Church has never held ANY of it to be acceptable — neither the abuse of children, nor any use of one’s sexuality outside of the marital relationship, nor the sin of sodomy, nor the entering of clerics into intimate sexual relationships at all, nor the abuse and coercion by those with authority.”

In perhaps his most inflammatory passage, the Bishop wrote: “It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord.

“The Church’s teaching is clear that the homosexual inclination is not in itself sinful, but it is intrinsically disordered in a way that renders any man stably afflicted by it unfit to be a priest.

“And the decision to act upon this disordered inclination is a sin so grave that it cries out to heaven for vengeance, especially when it involves preying upon the young or the vulnerable,” he added.

Bishop Morlino then appeared to compare gay sex to a demon when he invited followers to join him in fasting and abstinence, explaining that “some sins, like some demons, can only be driven out by prayer and fasting.”

The 71-year-old Bishop last year arranged for his Vicar General to send emails to priests urging them to consider denying funerals to people in same-sex unions, and to stop the deceased’s partner from having any role in the service.

Morlino’s latest comments feed into the dangerous myth linking gay people with paedophilia.

The fallacy, which has a long and hateful history, is experiencing a resurgence, largely thanks to alt-right trolls.

In the past year or so, it has been repeated by a Labour Party councillor who branded Pride marchers “paedophiles,” Spanish ultra-conservatives and a Danish imam.

And earlier this month, a sign with the message “Paedophiles are people too. Because Love Is Love” set against a rainbow background was posted around Willamette Primary School in Oregon.