Pope did NOT give his full support to gay civil unions: Pontiff's comments 'were taken out of context' by documentary makers 'who cut out statements', Vatican says
The Vatican says comments by Pope Francis on civil union laws in a documentary last month were taken out of context and did not signal a change in Church doctrine on homosexuals or support for same-sex marriage.
The documentary Francesco, which premiered at the Rome film festival on October 21, made headlines for a comment in which the pope says that homosexuals have a right to be in a family and that civil union laws covering homosexuals are needed.
The pope's comments prompted praise from liberals and calls for urgent clarification from conservatives.
The Vatican says comments by Pope Francis on civil union laws in a documentary last month were taken out of context
Last week, the Vatican's Secretariat of State quietly sent an 'explanatory note' to its ambassadors, who sent it to bishops.
The note was first reported by papal biographer Austen Ivereigh.
A Vatican source confirmed it on Monday and the Vatican's ambassador to Mexico posted it on his Facebook page.
In it, the Vatican confirmed that Francis was referring to his position in 2010 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires and strongly opposed moves to allow same-sex marriage.
Instead, he favoured extending legal protections to gay couples under what is understood in Argentina as a civil union law.
While Francis was known to have taken that position privately, he had never articulated his support while as Pope.
The documentary's director, Russian-born American citizen Evgeny Afineevsky (pictured), has refused to discuss the editing process
As a result, the comments made headlines, primarily because the Vatican's doctrine office in 2003 issued a document prohibiting such endorsement.
It added that two separate quotes in response to separate questions were spliced to appear as one, deleting the intervening context and questions.
The document, signed by Francis's predecessor as Pope, says the church's support for gay people 'cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions'.
The documentary's director, Russian-born American citizen Evgeny Afineevsky, told reporters he interviewed the pope but journalists later found the footage was from a 2019 interview with Mexico's Televisa. Some was not previously aired.
The Vatican has not confirmed or denied reports by sources in Mexico that the Vatican cut the quote from the footage it provided to Televisa after the interview, which was filmed with Vatican cameras.
After the documentary premiered, Afineevsky refused to discuss the editing process. It was not immediately possible to contact him for comment on the Vatican note.
The note said that in the first quote, the pope was referring to the right of homosexuals to be accepted by their own families as children and siblings.
Some saw the comments as homosexuals having a right to form families.
The note said the documentary cut comments where the pope expressed opposition to opposed homosexual marriage and made clear he was referring to civil union laws, which some countries have enacted to regulate benefits such as health care.
A phrase where Francis said 'it is an incongruence to speak of homosexual marriage' was cut.
'It is clear that Pope Francis was referring to certain state provisions and certainly not the doctrine of the Church, which he has reaffirmed numerous times over the years,' the note said.
'More than a year ago, during an interview, Pope Francis answered two different questions at two different times that, in the aforementioned documentary, were edited and published as a single answer without proper contextualisation, which has led to confusion,' said the guidance posted by Archbishop Coppola.
In the film, Mr Afineevsky recounts the story of Andrea Rubera, a married gay Catholic who wrote to Francis asking for his advice about bringing into the church his three young children with his husband.
It was an anguished question, given that the Catholic Church teaches that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered'.
The church also holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman and, as a result, gay marriage is unacceptable.
In the end, Mr Rubera recounts how Francis urged him to approach his parish transparently and bring the children up in the faith, which he did. After the anecdote ends, the film cuts to Francis's comments from the Televisa interview.
'Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,' Francis said. 'You can't kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.'
Francis's comments about gay people having the right to be in a family referred to parents with gay children, and the need for them to not kick their children out or discriminate against them, the Vatican guidance said.
Francis was not endorsing the right of gay couples to adopt children, even though the placement of the quote right after Mr Rubera told his story made it seem that Francis was.
The Pope's comments about gay civil unions came from a different part of the Televisa interview and included several caveats that were not included in the film.
In the Televisa interview, Francis made clear he was explaining his position about the unique case in Buenos Aires 10 years ago, as opposed to Mr Rubera's situation or gay marriage as a whole.
In the Televisa interview, Francis also insisted that he always maintained Catholic doctrine and said there was an 'incongruity' for the Catholic Church as far as 'homosexual marriage' is concerned.
The documentary eliminated that context.
The Vatican guidance insists that Francis was not contradicting church doctrine but it does not explain how his support for extending Argentine legal protections to gay couples in 2010 could be squared with the 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which says 'the principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual unions'.
Francis's predecessors, including Benedict XVI and John Paul II, condemned same-sex marriage during their papal tenure.
Francis himself had opposed legislation to approve same-sex marriages in Argentina when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires a decade ago - but had supported some kind of legal protection for the rights of gay couples at the time.
However, shortly after becoming Pope, he said of gay people that 'we must be brothers'.
He added: 'If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?'
For LGBTQ advocates, Pope Francis' apparent message was not just seen an endorsement of same-sex civil unions, but also an approval of same-sex parents having the privilege of raising families.
On social media, his comments were applauded by celebrities, commentators and members of LGBTQ community alike.
Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres wrote: 'Thank you, Pope Francis, for seeing love for what it is.'
No comments: