Commenting on recent media reports about a Catholic priest who refused to baptize a child parented by two women in a same-sex marriage, the Archbishop of Rijeka, Mate Uzinic, said on Thursday that this was no reason good enough to deny the sacrament to them.

A Rijeka priest, Kristijan Zeba, recently refused to baptise the child, claiming that “it was not possible because it was a same-sex couple.”

“That fact,” Uzinic said in a statement, “is not enough to refuse the baptism. A decision on whether the child should be baptised should have been made after examining the validity of the couple’s intentions and whether raising the child in the Catholic faith in such circumstances is possible,” he added.

Uzinic said that the trust the couple in question had in the Church was betrayed by posting about the case on social media, as a result of which, he added, the two women were exposed to “inappropriate comments and media sensationalism.”

He reminded those who “so easily allow the insulting of others and those who are different” that the Church teaches acceptance. He said the best climate for baptizing and raising a child in the Catholic faith was a family with a father and a mother, but that more and more children did not live in such a climate.

“The fact that the two persons in this case are civil partners must not lead one to conclude that their intention is not right and that they don’t accept the obligation to raise the child in faith,” he added.