Sydney:

Australia’s census will ask citizens about their sexuality for the first time, the government said Friday, a policy U-turn aimed at quelling anger from LGBTQ groups.

Supporters have said questions about sexual identity would provide a more accurate snapshot of who Australians are and who they love.

Just a day after his ministers explained the census change had been scrapped to avoid a divisive debate, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Friday that a question about sexuality would in fact be included in the 2026 survey.

Australia’s statistics bureau has developed a new question about sexual orientation, which will now be tested before it can be included in the survey, he said.

“We think that is a common sense position,” Albanese told public broadcaster ABC.

It is compulsory to complete the census in Australia, with fines for those who fail to do so.

But people would have the option of answering the sexual orientation question or not, the prime minister said.

Asked why the government had backed down, Albanese said: “No, this is the first time I have been asked about it.”

He made no mention of plans to include a question about gender identity, however, saying only that there would not be “massive changes” to the census.

Equality Australia, a rights advocacy group, said it was now unclear how the census would affect trans and gender-diverse people, as well as people with innate variations of sex characteristics.

“We welcome the inclusion of a sexual orientation question but the national snapshot of our nation must include all of us, not just some of us,” said Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown.

“The federal government shouldn’t pick and choose those of us who are worthy of being counted.”

Brown said including LGBTQ people in the census would bring Australia into line with other countries that already do so, including Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

“It would be a shame if the government doesn’t trust the Australian public enough to accept that the census needs to gather basic data about our nation for it be meaningful and useful,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of Pope Francis
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The alleged incident is said to have happened on May 20, when the Italian Bishops Conference opened a four-day assembly with a non-public meeting with the pontiff

Pope Francis used a derogatory term towards the LGBT community as he reiterated in a closed-door meeting with Italian bishops that gay people should not be allowed to become priests, Italian media reported on Monday.

La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, Italy’s largest circulation dailies, both quoted the pope as saying seminaries, or priesthood colleges, are already too full of “frociaggine“, a vulgar Italian term roughly translating as “faggotness”.

The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment.

La Repubblica attributed its story to several unspecified sources, while Corriere said it was backed up by a few, unnamed bishops, who suggested the pope, as an Argentine, might have not realised that the Italian term he used was offensive.

Political gossip website Dagospia was the first to report on the alleged incident, said to have happened on May 20, when the Italian Bishops Conference opened a four-day assembly with a non-public meeting with the pontiff.

Pope Francis, who is 87, has so far been credited with leading the Roman Catholic Church into taking a more welcoming approach towards the LGBT community.

In 2013, at the start of his papacy, he famously said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”, while last year he allowed priests to bless members of same-sex couples, triggering substantial conservative backlash.

Nevertheless, he delivered a similar message on gay seminarians – minus the reported swear word – when he met Italian bishops in 2018, telling them to carefully vet priesthood applicants and reject any suspected homosexuals.

In a 2005 document, released under Francis’s late predecessor Benedict XVI, the Vatican said the Church could admit into the priesthood those who had clearly overcome homosexual tendencies for at least three years.

The document said practicing homosexuals and those with “deep-seated” gay tendencies and those who “support the so-called gay culture” should be barred.