CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- As track champion Caster Semenya returned home to South Africa Aug. 25 to a heroine's welcome, a church official said the row caused by the International Association of Athletics Federation's insistence on a gender test could be a good thing if it makes people rethink gender stereotypes.

"I am delighted at the level of support she's got from so many people in South Africa and beyond," Dominican Father Mike Deeb, director of the justice and peace department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 25 telephone interview.

"Even if it is mostly motivated by national pride, it indicates that people are more tolerant of diversity," Father Deeb said.

Hundreds of people, including South African President Jacob Zuma, were at Johannesburg's airport to welcome Semenya, 18, whose winning time of 1 minute, 55.45 seconds for the women's 800-meter race in the world track and field championship meet in Berlin Aug. 19 was the fastest in the world this year.

Semenya beat her nearest rival by 2.45 seconds, a wide margin in track competition, leading to questions about her gender.

Hours before Semenya was due to compete in the finals, the international athletics association said it had started gender verification tests on the young runner from a village in the Limpopo province in northeastern South Africa.

Father Deeb said that, while he was "horrified" at the media taunting of Semenya and the humiliation the testing has caused the young athlete, "the most important thing about this controversy is that it forces us to recognize that gender is not a simple thing."

"As a church, we need to be open to the reality that gender is often ambiguous and examine our understanding of gender," he said.

The controversy "explodes the idea that anything other than stereotypical definitions of male and female is disordered," Father Deeb said.

Semenya's family as well as South African athletics officials have strongly defended the runner's right to compete as a woman, insisting that she is 100 percent female.

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