The Vatican has come under fire after dismissing a high-ranking Polish priest on the same day he revealed that he was gay.Father Krzystof Charamsa, who held a post in the Vatican’s branch for protecting Catholic dogma, urged the Catholic church to change its ‘backwards’ attitude to homosexuality.

‘It’s time for the Church to open its eyes about gay Catholics and to understand that the solution it proposes to them – total abstinence from a life of love – is inhuman,’ he told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, saying he wanted to challenge the Church’s ‘paranoia’.

‘I know that I will have to give up my ministry which is my whole life.

‘I know that the Church will see me as someone who did not know how to fulfil his duty [to remain chaste], who is lost and who is not even with a woman but with a man!’