The Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury has claimed that the Church should reject gay people, to avoid encouraging a “pagan world”.

The Bishop Mark Davies made the claims today in a letter to his diocese, according to The Catholic Universe.

He said: “It would be the ultimate failure in pastoral care or charity, to mislead people by encouraging them to remain in sin, or fail to call them to repentance and renewal.

“Pope Francis describes this approach as ‘deceptive mercy’, a false mercy which bandages wounds but fails to heal them.”

He continued: “I want to dispel any misleading impression that the Church will abandon her witness to the truth and change her teaching in the face of the hostile trends in public opinion or the destructive ideologies of our time.

“The first Christians required courage to overcome and transform a vast, pagan world whose ideas about marriage and sexual morality were not unlike those which prevail in our own culture.

“Today we need this same, supernatural courage to live and give witness to all the Church believes and teaches about marriage, the family and human sexuality.”

The Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury is not to be confused with the Anglican Bishop of Shrewsbury within the Church of England.