Tolerance of LGBTQIA+ relationships by the Roman Catholic Church… for now.
The Roman Catholic Church’s approval of blessings of couples in same-sex relationships “will remain” under Pope Leo XIV. This is according to the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, who made the statement in response to a question from a journalist for the Rome-based Il Messaggero.
In December 2023, under the late Pope Francis, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document entitled “Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings“, which opened the door to church blessings for couples in “irregular” situations, including same-sex relationships.
Fiducia Supplicans is a document mainly dedicated to reflecting on the theological significance of the act of blessing. It distinguishes between formal liturgical blessings and spontaneous, pastoral ones. Here, the blessing of couples in same-sex relationships fall under the latter, along with blessings offered to those other relationships contrary to Roman Catholic Catholic teaching.
“A blessing may be imparted that … descends from God upon those who — recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help — do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”
But the Fiducia Supplicans stresses that such blessings are in no way comparable to marriage.
“Rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage — which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’ — and what contradicts it are inadmissible.”
This document, signed by Fernández and his deputy Msgr. Armando Matteo, was approved by Pope Francis.
Even though the document emphasized that the blessings could not take the form of a liturgical rite, and did not imply formal approval of “irregular” unions, it still generated conservative backlash, so that – when Francis died – anti-LGBTQIA+ church leaders hoped that Pope Leo would rescind or ignore it.
But Fernández, after meeting with Pope Leo, said that the position stays. “The declaration will remain.”
