Barbie Latza Nadeau, Rome Bureau Chief for The Daily Beast and author Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Guns and Drugs on the Mafia Coast, about sex trafficking and the mafia, and Beast Book Angel Face, about Amanda Knox, has reported from Italy for Newsweek since 1997 and for The Daily Beast since 2009. She is also a CNN Contributor and frequent writer for Scientific American.

ROME—There are few people outside Vatican City who have spent as much one-on-one time with Pope Francis as Juan Carlos Cruz. The Chilean man is the main whistleblower in a clerical sex abuse scandal that prompted all 34 of Chile’s bishops to resign in unison last week for their role in covering up blatant rape and molestation of Cruz and others like him over a period of years in Chile.

Now Cruz has revealed even more of his intimate conversations with Francis while he was in Rome, which lasted over a period of three days.

He said he talked to the pope about being gay, and that the pope told him to essentially not worry about it. “You know Juan Carlos, that does not matter,” Cruz told El Pais and other publications over the weekend. “God made you like this. God loves you like this. The Pope loves you like this and you should love yourself and not worry about what people say."

If what Cruz says is true, and there is no reason to believe it isn’t, it would mark a monumental change in attitude by the Church, which has previously called homosexuality “intrinsically disordered.”

Francis has made baby steps when it come to LGBT rights and equality in the past, telling priests it is OK to baptize babies of same sex couples and working towards welcoming gays in the church. But he has never made such a bold statement as to admit that homosexuality is natural, and he has certainly never implied that the church would treat it as such.

There is no reason to believe that Cruz misinterpreted Francis’ comments— they spoke their native Spanish and Cruz is a highly respected person—but the Vatican has refused to confirm them, saying instead that “the Pope does not comment on private conversations.”

But by letting Cruz’s words stand alone, Francis is lessening their meaning. Read more via Daily Beast