Story at a glance
- The Vatican on Monday issued a decree against blessing for same-sex relationships.
- “The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit,” the Vatican statement said.
- In response, a number of Catholic priests have come forward in defiance of the decree, including the Parish Priests Initiative, an Austrian-based group of about 350 priests.
A group of Roman Catholic priests say they will continue blessing same-sex couples despite a ruling from the Vatican this week saying such blessings are invalid, Reuters reports.
The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, issued a ruling Monday in response to a question on whether Catholic clergy can “give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.”
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The answer was “negative,” and an explanation was published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, who has supported the right of gay couples to have civil legal protections but has opposed gay marriage. The announcement was a blow to the Catholic LGBTQ+ community who had hopes the church was opening up to same-sex relationships under Pope Francis.
“The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit,” the Vatican statement said.
“It is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex,” the statement said.
In response, a number of Catholic priests have come forward in defiance of the decree, including the Parish Priests Initiative, an Austrian-based group of about 350 priests.
“We members of the Parish Priests Initiative are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that seeks to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples,” the group told Reuters.
“This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to have overcome with Pope Francis. We will — in solidarity with so many — not reject any loving couple in the future who ask to celebrate God’s blessing, which they experience every day, also in a worship service.”
The group has often been at odds with the Vatican, as it pushed the church to allow priests to marry and allow women to become priests. It has also broken with the church by allowing communion for Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry, according to Reuters.
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