Pope decrees that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions

Pope decrees that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions because God ‘cannot bless sin’

• The Vatican orthodoxy office issued an official verdict on the issue on Monday 
• It said gay people should be treated with ‘respect’ but their unions not blessed
• Blessing unions would ‘approve and encourage’ a same-sex lifestyle, it said 

The Vatican decreed today that the Catholic Church cannot give its blessing to same-sex unions because God ‘cannot bless sin’. 

Pope Francis signed off the two-page ruling which was published in seven languages by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  

It called on Catholic clergy to treat gay people with ‘respect and sensitivity’ but ruled that blessing their unions would ‘approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God’.   

Francis last year caused controversy in the church by giving his backing to civil unions for same-sex people, but has not come out in favour of religious unions.  

Pope Francis, pictured giving his blessing to worshippers in St Peter’s Square on Sunday, has signed off a ruling saying the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions 

The verdict was published on Monday by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by Pope Francis 

The pope’s earlier comments emerged in a documentary in which he said that ‘what we have to create is a civil union law’, a position at odds with previous dogma. 

‘Homosexual people have the right to be in a family… they are children of God,’ he said. 

The Vatican played down the remarks, saying they were taken out of context and referred to his position while he was Bishop of Buenos Aires. 

But it did not confirm or deny reports that it had ordered the sensitive remarks to be cut from the Mexican TV interview in which they were initially made in 2019.  

Catholic teaching holds that gay people should be treated with respect but that homosexual acts are ‘intrinsically disordered’. 

A 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrine office – bearing the stamp of Francis’s two immediate predecessors – said legal approval would mean the ‘approval of deviant behaviour’. 

‘The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,’ it said

While Francis, 84, opposes gay marriage, his words were hailed by admirers as a ‘major step forward in the church’s support for LGBT people’. 

However, there was also a chorus of anger from conservative Catholics who said it ‘clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the church’.  

Monday’s decree reiterated the Church’s position that marriage between man and a woman is part of God’s plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life.   

Since gay unions are not intended to be part of that plan, they cannot be blessed by the church, the document said.

‘The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,’ the document said.

God ‘does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,’ it said. 

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