ROME (CWNews.com/LSN.ca) - Just weeks after having been criticized for not distancing himself from supporters who seek to oust the Vatican from the United Nations, US presidential hopeful Al Gore is embroiled in a controversy with critics calling him anti-Catholic.

    Organizers of an international homosexual pride event to take place in Rome this year -- an event which they claim is a direct slap at the Catholic Church and the Jubilee Year celebrations -- said they have received a letter of endorsement from Gore.

    The event, World Pride 2000, plans to flood the city, which surrounds the Vatican, with hundreds of thousands of homosexual activists engaging in parody of the Church and overtly sexual displays. The Vatican had strenuously requested that Rome not allow the gay pride event, especially this year since millions of pilgrims are visiting Rome due to the Jubilee-year celebrations. Rome's city government has allowed the gay pride week to take place from July 1 to 9 despite the Vatican pleas. Catholic commentators in Rome have called the homosexual initiative a calculated attack against the Church and an "anti-Jubilee."

    The pride parade's organizer in Rome, Imma Battaglia, president of the Mario Mieli gay center, swore at Pope John Paul II using the f-word in an interview with a homosexual newspaper. The paper, Toronto's NOW magazine, also quoted Battaglia as reading a letter of endorsement of World Pride 2000 signed by Gore. In the letter, Gore says he is "pleased to send greetings," and that her group is "building a good and just society on the bedrock principle of opportunity."