Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has praised Pope Francis as an ally of the gay community.
Mr Varadkar also told a Harvard event he is now working with a number of international organisations supporting LGBTA rights on a pro bono basis.
Mr Varadkar, speaking to an audience at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government on Thursday night, said: “One of the great allies that we had in recent years was Pope Francis.
“That was someone who spoke out against criminalisation [of gay people] and his messages were very strong.”
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Mr Varadkar hosted the late pope’s visit to Ireland in 2018, which he described as one of the highlights of his time as taoiseach. He said the pope was a “really down to earth person”.
“He was very much like talking to your parish priest,” he said.
A little over a year after stepping down as taoiseach, Mr Varadkar told the audience at Harvard, where he was giving the annual Gustav Pollak Lecture, that he is still figuring out his next career steps.
“I took the decision to go when I did and I was always very keen that when I left office I would do so on my own terms,” the former Fine Gael politician said on Thursday evening.
“I didn’t necessarily prepare a plan to what I’d do next,” he said. Mr Varadkar said he was giving himself until Christmas to continue “trying out a few different things” and he would then “reassess”.
Last January Mr Varadkar was announced as the Kennedy School’s Spring 2025 Hauser leader, a position that involves guest lecturing and mentoring students.
Responding to questions on Thursday night, Mr Varadkar said there were three things every government leader has to do: keep the show on the road, deal with whatever comes at you and carve out space for your own agenda.
Due to Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine he was left with a “a real bandwidth struggle”.
Asked about opening the doors to Ukrainian refugees, he said it was a decision he stands over “and I always will”.
He said the pandemic hit in the early days of his leadership, before the new government was formed, “when you’re really not supposed to make any big decisions”.
What scared him most was running out of ICU capacity and not being able to give a “bed to the sickest person who needed it the most”. That never happened, he said.
Mr Varadkar said his decision to serve as a medical doctor and treat patients while leading the government was a “gesture of solidarity”.
But he said he understands why some critics had concerns about him getting sick or saw it as a “public relations stunt” and a bid for attention.
Mr Varadkar was tight-lipped about Brexit, saying he is saving those details for his memoir due out this autumn with Penguin Ireland imprint Sandycove press.
He described Ireland as “trying to punch above our weight so far as who we are and what we are” by way of soft power: international aid, arts and culture.
He also touched on the nation’s need to be “less complacent about our defence”, noting the encroachment of Russian planes and vessels.
“We don’t know what they’re doing but they have the capability to look at the cables on the sea bed which connect Europe to America and are in our waters,” he said.
In addition to writing his memoir and giving lectures at Harvard, Mr Varadkar has taken up work at an American public relations firm, a role that takes up two to three days a month, he said.
Mr Varadkar declined to comment specifically on the dispute between Harvard and Donald Trump over academic freedom and funding.
Earlier this month the Trump administration threatened to cut more than $2.2 billion (€1.9 billion) of research funding if the institution did not comply with demands to limit activism on campus, monitor international students and enact governance, leadership and discipline reforms.
The nation’s oldest and wealthiest college refused to bend and sued the Trump administration earlier this week in response.
In a public letter Harvard president Alan M Garber called the demands “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority”.
Mr Varadkar said he is concerned about cuts to medical research. “I think academic freedom and scientific excellence are really important. America’s universities are one of the things that helped make it great in my view,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said he believes “free speech and academic freedom are very much American values and ones that are worth defending” but said he was conscious that he was a “visitor” in the United States and a domestic political issue was “not something that I really want to stick my beak in”.
