The head of The Catholic Church, Pope Francis, in a documentary that premiered on Wednesday, 21st of October 2020 at the Rome Film Festival, called for legislation to protect same-sex civil unions. “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They are children of God and have a right to a family,” he had said in the documentary titled Francesco. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
The comment by the pope came midway into the film that delves into major societal issues: the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.
According to the report by APNews, these comments are not recent. He had made these comments during a May 2019 interview on clergy sexual abuse that was never fully broadcast. The Vatican, which had the full interview in its archives, apparently allowed the comments to be aired now in the new documentary, APNews reports. “There’s nothing new because it’s a part of that interview,” One of Francis’ top communications advisers, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro told The Associated Press as he exited the premiere. “It seems strange that you don’t remember.”
His comments are also not new. Shortly after he was announced as the new pope in 2013, he went viral after his reply to a question of reports of gays in the clergy. The pope had answered, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” There are also several reports that he is the first pope to use the word “gay” as an identifier. He had also proposed civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage, a position he has reiterated as recently as 2017.
But it is also a major shift from what many believe to be Catholic doctrine about gay people. According to NPR, In 2003, the Vatican’s office on doctrine — under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI — taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.” Placing them on the same level as marriage, it added, would mean approval of “deviant behavior”.
“We can see the Pope’s comments as yet another positive step in the church’s relationship with LGBT people and a sign of his continuing pastoral care for LGBT Catholics,” Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit Priest popular for advocating for LGBT persons had tweeted. “He’s creating a new space for LGBT people … He’s saying it on the record and he’s being very clear. It’s not simply that he’s tolerating it — he’s supporting it,” Martin told CNN’s Christine Amanpour in an interview on Wednesday.
However, while the pope believes that there should be legal protections for LGBT relationships or only those that treat them as identical to marriage, he doesn’t necessarily believe that the Catholic Church should join LGBT+ persons in holy matrimony. While many are condemning the comment by the pope, others are encouraging the pope to go further and recognize same-sex marriages within the church. “We urge Pope Francis to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize and bless these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church, too,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ Catholic group New Ways Ministry, said in a statement to the AP.
