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Pope Francis has declared his support for civil unions between same-sex couples.
By advocating for the legal protection of gay couples, the Vicar of Christ goes against his predecessors and the Vatican’s doctrinal office.
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family,” said Francis in the documentary Francesco that premiered Wednesday in Rome. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”
“Legally covering” such unions have historically been slammed by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), an entity that said “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,” according to the Catholic News Agency.
“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,” said the CDF in 2003. “The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.”
“Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfill the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.”
As of this writing, the Vatican’s press office has yet to respond to questions from the Catholic News Agency about Francis’ remarks in the documentary.
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