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The Pope has criticised British equality legislation on gay rights claiming that it contradicts “natural law”.

On officially confirming his first visit to Britain later this year, Pope Benedict XVI told a group of Catholic bishops from England and Wales that the effects of legislation designed to give equality in the UK had imposed “unjust limitations” on the freedom of religious communities.

“Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society,” he told the group gathered in Rome.

“Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

Despite not mentioning gay rights specifically, his remarks have been interpreted as an attack on the Sexual Orientation Regulations that require Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay parents.

The bishops from England and Wales told the Pope that this legislation had forced the closure of around half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies since it came into effect on 1 January this year.

It is thought the Pope was also referring in his statement to the Equality Bill, which will restrict the church’s ability to select staff whose lifestyles they do not approve of.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell condemned the Pope’s remarks. He said: “The Pope’s criticism that British equality legislation ‘violates the natural law’ is a coded attack on the legal rights granted to women and gay people. His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos.”

It isn’t the first time that the Pope has courted controversy over gay rights. Earlier this year, he called gay marriage laws an “attack” on the natural differences between men and women.

And in 2008, he claimed that the existence of gay people threatened humanity as much as the destruction of the rainforests, adding that “blurring” genders through acceptance of transgender people would kill off the human race.

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