Rome: The Vatican said on Monday Pope Francis has formally approved priests blessing same-sex couples as long as they are not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies.
In a landmark ruling, a new document explains a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God’s love and mercy shouldn’t be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it, reported AP.
The document from the Vatican’s doctrine office elaborates on a letter that the Pope sent to two conservative cardinals that was published in October. In that preliminary response, Pope Francis suggested such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if they didn’t confuse the ritual with the sacrament of marriage.
The new document reiterates that condition and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. It stresses that blessings in question must be non-liturgical in nature and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union, using set rituals or even with the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.
But requests for such blessings for same-sex couples should not be denied full stop. It offers an extensive and broad definition of the term “blessing” in Scripture to insist that people seeking a transcendent relationship with God and looking for his love and mercy should not be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” as a precondition for receiving it.
“Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God. The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence, mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live,” the document says.
“It is a seed of the Holy Spirit that must be nurtured, not hindered.”
The Vatican had long opposed same-sex marriage as it held that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman.
