(CP) Pope Francis has reportedly claimed in a latest book that his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, defended Francis’ support for legal civil union protections for same-sex couples to prelates.
Excerpts of the pontiff’s latest book, The Successor: My Memories of Benedict XVI, which is slated for publication in Spanish on Wednesday, maintain that Benedict XVI defended Francis on the problem in front of an undisclosed group of cardinals, in line with Reuters.
“They showed up at his home to practically put me on trial they usually accused me in front of him of backing same-sex marriage,” Francis said.
The former pope reportedly helped the cardinals to “distinguish” Francis’ views on the problem, explaining to them that his position was “no heresy,” in line with Francis’ recollection within the book.
Pope Francis, who endorsed civil unions for homosexual couples while serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, became the first pontiff to accomplish that in 2020.
“Homosexual people have the correct to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis asserted during an interview for the film “Francesco.”
“Nobody needs to be thrown out or be made miserable over it,” he added. “What we now have to create is a civil union law; that way, they’re legally covered.”
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith sent shockwaves through the Roman Catholic Church last December when it issued “Fiducia Supplicans,” which allows priests to bless “couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”
After the guidance drew opposition from Catholic bishops, mainly in Africa and Eastern Europe, the Vatican subsequently released five pages of clarification to the guidance.
The Vatican insisted that “the document is obvious and definitive about marriage and sexuality,” adding that the “non-ritualized type of blessing” authorized by the declaration “doesn’t intend to justify anything that will not be morally acceptable” but as an alternative amounts to a “response of a pastor towards two individuals who ask for God’s help.”
Other Catholic prelates pushed back against any claim that Benedict would have supported the guidance.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller of Germany claimed during an event marking the primary anniversary of Benedict’s death last December that the declaration “never would have happened [under Benedict] since it was so ambiguous,” in line with Reuters.
Mueller, who served as the pinnacle of the Vatican’s doctrinal office before Francis removed him in 2013, denied the metaphysical existence of marriage between two members of the identical sex.
“There isn’t any homosexual matrimony,” he said. “It doesn’t exist, it cannot exist, despite ideologies we now have [today],” he said.
In 2003, Benedict XVI — who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office — signed off on a document asserting that compassion for homosexuals within the Church “cannot lead in any technique to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
Other portions of Francis’ latest book detail the political maneuvering behind the 2005 papal conclave that led to Benedict’s election following the death of Pope John Paul II, in line with The Associated Press.
Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, claims a few of his fellow cardinals “used” him to siphon votes away from then-Cardinal Ratzinger throughout the 2005 conclave.
“They told me afterward that they didn’t need a ‘foreign’ pope,'” said Francis, who ultimately supported Benedict’s election.
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