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The Catholic Church Will Bless Gay People as Long as They Don’t Get Married

A decree released Monday seems to retrench traditional teachings after Pope Francis previously discussed a more progressive attitude toward gay civil unions.
Pope Francis attends a Mass to mark 5th Centenary of the Philippine Church in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 14, 2021 in Vatican City, Vatican.
Pope Francis attends a Mass to mark 5th Centenary of the Philippine Church in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 14, 2021 in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

Just months after Pope Francis said that gay people are “children of God” and deserve access to civil unions, the Vatican has announced it will not bless those partnerships. 

In a Monday decree, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles questions around Catholic orthodoxy, wrote that although gay relationships can have “positive elements,” Catholic clergy can’t bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.” The decree was approved by Pope Francis. 

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"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 decree reads. 

The document appears to retrench traditional Catholic teachings after the pope’s comments last year, when he stunned the world by advocating a more progressive attitude toward gay relationships than any of his predecessors had.  

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They are children of God and have a right to a family," Francis said in October, in comments captured by the documentary “Francesco.” "What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered."

At the time, Pope Francis seemed to be inching the Church toward more acceptance of same-sex unions and gay people (although he has resolutely opposed letting gay people marry). As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis supported a “law of civil cohabitation” that would’ve protected gay people in same-sex unions. In 2013, when asked about a supposedly gay priest, Francis replied, “Who am I to judge?” 

But almost immediately after Francis made his comments about unions, the Vatican cast doubt on them. In a note to the church’s ambassadors and bishops around the world, the Vatican’s secretary of state said that Francis’ remarks did not impact official church doctrine, and that they had been “edited and published as a single answer without proper contextualization, which has led to confusion.”

The Monday declaration made it clear that the pope’s previous comments only applied to earthly laws—not divine ones.  In the decree, which was published in seven languages, the Vatican said that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” 

Catholic teaching holds that marriage is meant to be an eternal bond between a man and a woman.

The Vatican tried to argue in its decree that its teachings don’t constitute “unjust discrimination”—even though it argues that gay people don’t deserve to have the same rights as straight people.

Clergy can still bless gay individuals, as long as they “manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.”