Pope Francis has taken the most important step so far for the inclusion of the LGBTI community in the Church. In a very significant change of direction, and which will surely enrage the most conservative sectors of the Roman Curia, the Pontiff authorized yesterday that priests can bless homosexual couples as long as this blessing is not equated in any way with marriage, which it continues to be reserved, for Catholic doctrine, to the union between a man and a woman.
The Vatican establishes this through a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body in charge of regulating Catholic morality, which endorses the blessings as a gesture of "pastoral closeness" for both couples "in irregular situations" - that is, all those who are not married by the Church - as for same-sex couples. It is a declaration, a document of high doctrinal value, which is the first to be published in more than 20 years – the last one was Dominus Jesus in 2000 – and it entails a paradigm shift in terms of the position of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2021, when the old holy office had decreed that chaplains could not carry out these blessings in any way because "God cannot bless sin". At the time, the Doctrine of the Faith was still presided over by Majorcan Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, while for a few months the prefect has been Víctor Manuel Fernández - better known as Tucho -, a personal friend of Francis. It is the same prefect who recently clarified that transsexual people can be baptized and godparents, like the rest of the faithful.
The text, entitled Fiducia Supplicans: on the pastoral meaning of the blessings, begins with an introduction by Cardinal Fernández who explains that this statement deepens the pastoral meaning of the blessings to "broaden and enrich its classical understanding" by means of a theological reflection based on the thought of the Argentine Pope. The statement analyzes the origin and theological meaning of the act of blessing and reviews it from the Old Testament to the rest of the scriptures, and concludes that, "granted by God to the human being and granted by humans to the neighbor, the blessing is transformed into inclusion, solidarity and pacification". It is a way of understanding it consistent with a pontificate that has always been very attentive to the peripheries of Catholicism, both geographical and social. In fact, at the end of September, the Pope already caused a great stir when, in a document signed together with Fernández to answer a series of doubts raised by five ultra-conservative cardinals about the affair before the synod of bishops, he implied that he could accept these blessings as a sign of "pastoral charity". "We cannot constitute ourselves as judges who only deny, reject, exclude", he explained then.
The Vatican wants to insist that this change, despite representing "a true development in relation to what has been said so far about the blessings", does not in any case mean the modification of "the perennial teaching of the Church on marriage" . The Holy See continues to emphasize that marriage is only "the exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to begetting children", and in this "the doctrine of the Church remains firm".
For this reason, the prefect points out that "rites and prayers that could create confusion between what is constitutive of marriage" are considered inadmissible, something that happens in the most liberal parts of the German Church, which offer "acts of blessing" to gay couples despite the Santa's disapproval. The Vatican does not intend to "legitimize anything", the cardinal underlines, but "only to open the same life to God, to ask for his help to live better and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the gospel are lived more faithfully" .
To avoid "any kind of confusion or scandal" the blessings can never be carried out at the same time as the civil rites of union and "not even with the dresses, gestures or words proper to a marriage". On the other hand, they can be given in other contexts, such as during a visit to a shrine, meeting a priest, praying in a group or during a pilgrimage. The blessing to these couples will have to consist of a "short" and "spontaneous prayer" with which a priest can ask for "peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue or mutual help" to its members.
