When I was a kid I came up with a name for the group that snuck in and set up those signs, “Polite People for the Cessation of Byway Maintenance”. They always put their protest signs up a respectful distance away and always just the one in each direction, thus the polite people part.
People keep focusing on the slur and his apology. The context of what he is saying wouldn’t be any better if he used an acceptable word for gay people. Either way, both times, he was saying that there are too many gay priests and that he wishes that there were less of them. This is bigoted regardless of the specific words used.