SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica (LifeSiteNews) — The national seminary of Costa Rica required seminarians to take a week of “intensive sexual education” that promoted transgenderism and masturbation and featured obscene topics such as “orgasms” and “penetration.”
For years, Costa Rica’s Seminario Nacional Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in San José has included annual classes about sexuality as part of formation.
One instructor has been Dr. Margarita Murillo, a well-known Costa Rican psychologist and “sexologist” who helped design the country’s controversial “sexual education” curriculum, which has faced criticism for promoting transgender ideology.
According to Murillo, the “intensive sexual education” at the seminary taught future priests that they “cannot deny pleasure” and that masturbation “is not a sin.” It also presented homosexuality not “as a sin but as an option” and encouraged “respect for different sexual orientations.”
And Murillo stressed to seminarians that people’s gender confusion “must be respected,” regardless of their “anatomy.”
READ: Catholic priest promotes radical ‘sexologist’ who defends homosexuality, transgenderism
Dozens of priests have already undergone the full “sexual education” program, and Murillo boasts of having met former students now serving as priests who have thanked her for “opening their eyes.”
Moreover, the sexologist is having an impact far beyond Costa Rica: One priest who worked with Murillo in Costa Rica, Fr. Edgardo “Lalo” Jara, OFM, is currently a prominent official in the Archdiocese of Washington, where he has brought Murillo to lead a workshop on sexuality at a local parish. Jara has drawn attention to Murillo’s involvement at the Costa Rican seminary on his online show, through which he has repeatedly promoted her to his thousands of viewers.
‘Sexual education’ promoted masturbation to seminarians
The “sexual education” program of Seminario Nacional Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles is taught by a group of lay psychologists, led by Dr. Gastón de Mezerville of the University of Costa Rica, who began running workshops at the seminary more than 20 years ago, according to a 2014 exposé by Costa Rican newspaper La Nación.
“Each year, seminarians receive an intensive week of sexual education in which the subject is addressed without sanctimoniousness or euphemisms,” the paper reported. Topics include “orgasms, pornography and sexual diversity,” as well as genitalia. Instructors show explicit, R-rated movies that contain sex scenes and nudity.
Topics include “orgasms, pornography and sexual diversity,” as well as genitalia. Instructors show explicit, R-rated movies that contain sex scenes and nudity.
Despite the obscene content, seminarians “must attend” the sexuality classes, which are “a requirement of their formation” and take place every year for all eight years of formation, La Nación said.
Not only is the “sexual education” lewd and graphic, it’s directly contrary to Catholic teaching.
Murillo discussed the perversion that she pushed on seminarians at Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in an interview with kienyke.com in September 2014 titled, “She tells future priests about the joys of sex.” Kienyke.com described themes like “penetration, homosexuality, lesbianism and pleasure” as the “daily bread” of her students.
Murillo said that the “sexual education” course taught seminarians that they “cannot deny pleasure” and that masturbation is “not a sin” but a way to “calm” impulses.
“They are emphasized that they cannot deny pleasure because it is a way the body uses to stabilize emotion. Their body can ask them at a certain time,” she said.
“And in that case, what is done?” the interviewer asked. “They are supposed to have a vow of celibacy and cannot have sex.”
“We talk about how to handle desire and pleasure. We think about exploration, masturbation: it is not a sin and it is used to calm that impulse,” Murillo responded.
“We talk about how to handle desire and pleasure. We think about exploration, masturbation: it is not a sin and it is used to calm that impulse,” Murillo responded.
The Catholic Church teaches that masturbation is always an “intrinsically and seriously disordered act” and mortally sinful.
Murillo also said that the class presented homosexuality “as an option” rather than a sin and put seminarians “in question with their identity.”
“Homosexuality is not spoken of as sin but as an option,” she stated, immediately adding that, “The workshop puts them in question with their identity, vocation, dreams, and life projects.”
The sexologist further noted that the class included testimonies from people who have committed pedophilia and adultery and promoted “respect for different sexual orientations.”
“We bring them life testimonies of priests, couples, people who have been in jail for committing pedophilia and adultery,” Murillo said. “Those testimonies are revealing and confront them with their wishes. For this, respect for different sexual orientations is promoted.”
Murillo tells seminarians: Gender confusion ‘must be respected’
Murillo then pointed to part of the “sexual education” that dealt with transgenderism and “how a person, despite being born as a man, can feel like a woman.”
According La Nación, Murillo told future priests that people’s gender confusion “must be respected.”
“The ‘teacher’ says that in these cases what the heart and head of people say must be respected, regardless of the anatomy of their body,” La Nación reported. “She immediately stresses that identity cannot be pressured or forced, but to listen and accompany.”
“The ‘teacher’ says that in these cases what the heart and head of people say must be respected, regardless of the anatomy of their body,” La Nación reported.
“You don’t have to see things black and white. We are dealing with people. You have to love them, not lose perspective. Do not replicate stigmas,” Murillo told her students, according to the newspaper.
Her indoctrination appears to have worked: “The seminarians share that vision,” La Nación related. “The young men we drank coffee with agree that homosexual persons should be embraced and not judged.”
They “consider that the majority of priests respect and value homosexual people, but that those who proclaim unfortunate speeches get more attention, so there is a perception that they are the most,” the article continued.
La Nación also observed that the course “has a similar tone” as that of Costa Rica’s national “sexual education” curriculum, which Murillo helped to draft and which has come under fire for promoting the idea of fluid “gender identities” to children. “Paradoxically, the Catholic Church opposed these programs and asked parents not to send their children to those classes,” La Nación pointed out.
Homosexual acts are gravely sinful and “intrinsically disordered,” and the inclination to homosexuality “itself must be seen as an objective disorder,” according to Catholic doctrine.
The Church rejects transgender ideology as well and stresses the unity of the soul and body. “From the first moment of their creation, man and woman are distinct, and will remain so for all eternity,” states a 2004 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith approved by Pope John Paul II. “Male and female are thus revealed as belonging ontologically to creation and destined therefore to outlast the present time, evidently in a transfigured form.”
“Spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches.
Seminarians dropping out
In addition to testimonies of pedophiles and adulterers, the “sexual education” at Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles seminary featured those of “ex-religious who hung up their habits to get married and have children,” according to La Nación.
Murillo also said that seminarians “are recommended that they have had their life as a couple before thinking about the priesthood so that they can make their decision more freely.”
Unsurprisingly, men frequently discern out of the seminary, often during the “sexual education” week.
La Nación highlighted the story of one seminarian who announced his intention to drop out in the middle of a workshop on sexuality. The instructor, psychologist Julita Vázquez, “has seen lots of scenes like that,” the newspaper said.
“Preparation to become a priest is a constant discernment. At any time during the eight years that the process lasts, you can withdraw. For some, the week of intensive sexual education is a trigger to make the decision,” La Nación explained.
“Every year, about 15 young men leave the seminary,” compared with around 10 who are ordained as priests, the article noted.
Murillo’s protégés spread perverse ideology – including in the US
At least “five generations of priests” – around 50 in total – have undergone the “entire program” of sexual indoctrination at the Costa Rican seminary and are now “on the street putting into practice what they have learned in the classes,” La Nación said. Murillo claimed that she has encountered several former students serving as priests who “greet her and thank her for ‘opening their eyes.’”
And Murillo’s protégés are spreading her perverted sexual teachings beyond just Costa Rica.
READ: Catholic priest promotes radical ‘sexologist’ who defends homosexuality, transgenderism
In the Archdiocese of Washington, Fr. Edgardo “Lalo” Jara, a Franciscan priest from Costa Rica who says he worked with Murillo as a teacher, is promoting the sexologist on his online program and taking her to parishes.
Jara has hosted Murillo on his show, “Cafeteando con el Padre Lalo,” recommended her to his viewers, and encouraged them to visit her website and social media pages, which promote homosexuality, gender ideology, masturbation, and contraception.
In an interview with Jara last year, Murillo repeatedly contradicted Catholic teaching on sexuality and defended homosexual “expression,” with no pushback from the priest, who called her comments “excellent.”
Jara said in another video that he brought Murillo to Catholic schools where he taught in Costa Rica to instruct his students about sexuality. More recently, he brought the heterodox sexologist to Saint Camillus Catholic Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, to run a workshop with parents and children on “healing sexuality.”
Like Murillo, Jara takes a permissive attitude toward LGBT ideology, urging viewers not to condemn homosexuality but to “respect” it. In one episode of his show, he discouraged people from changing the TV channel if a child sees two homosexuals kissing, as doing so would create “a sense of anti-respect.”
In another episode, the priest suggested that using contraception could be justified depending on the circumstances and presented contraceptive sexual relations as an option for women with a “serious medical condition.”
Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, however, teaches that “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”
Jara is listed as the director of the Office of Evangelization and Pastoral Planning for the Archdiocese of Washington and a vocation director for the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Name Province. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops appointed him a National Eucharistic Preacher for the National Eucharistic Revival in 2021.
Murillo: ‘We started the workshops with the bishops’
According to Murillo, Church authorities — including bishops — lent their support to the “sexual education” course at Seminario Nacional Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles from the beginning.
“How did you get the Church to accept that you speak openly about these topics?” kienyke.com asked her.
“We started the workshops with the bishops, those who take the decisions in the Church, and it was not difficult to convince them because the project is well structured,” Murillo said.
Gastón de Mezerville also discussed the interest of Church leaders in the program, which he called a “sign of the openness of the religious authorities, who hope to give a comprehensive vision of sexuality, beyond population control,” according to La Nación.
“With the passage of time, the authorities of the center of formation understood the importance of the subject, until they established it as a program of eight intensive weeks, one for each year studied in the seminary,” La Nación reported.