John, a fervent advocate for and member of the LGBTQ+ community, condemned the Vatican’s statement as “hypocrisy,” considering their financial investment in his 2019 biopic Rocketman, which depicts him coming out as a gay man and entering into a sexual relationship with his manager John Reid before eventually celebrating his marriage to husband David Furnish at the end of the movie. The couple, who’ve been together for 15 years, were married on Dec. 21, 2014, at their Windsor estate nine months after same-sex marriage became legal in England.
“How can the Vatican refuse to bless gay marriages because they ‘are sin’, yet happily make a profit from investing millions in ‘Rocketman’ – a film which celebrates my finding happiness from my marriage to David?? #hypocrisy,” the legendary entertainer wrote on Twitter, while tagging the Vatican News and Pope Francis.
The Daily Beast article the 73-year-old hitmaker cited in his tweet exposed the Vatican’s financial books kept by the Holy See’s Supervisory and Financial Information Authority, formerly known as the Financial Intelligence Authority. Money donated for the poor had been dubiously invested in other ventures, including Hollywood. A $4.5 million expenditure was related to finance the 2019 films Men in Black: International and Rocketman, a film that depicts gay sex, which the Vatican labeled as “intrinsically disordered” on Monday. The Vatican’s Secretariat of State reportedly contributed £850,000 toward the biopic, which is roughly 3% of the film’s budget.
Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons, a very public ally to the LGBTQ+ community, also took to Twitter to express his disappointment in the Vatican and the heartbreaking message it’s sharing with young people. “So disappointing. It’s not about LGBTQ youth needing marriage or religion. It’s about our leaders telling our youth they are undeserving of the same rights afforded to their hetero peers,” he wrote. “That God’s love is subjective. If there’s a God it certainly isn’t leading this.”
