Pope Francis, in an Italian documentary released Wednesday, signaled support for same-sex civil unions.
The pope said that gay couples need to be “legally covered,” in a new documentary, Francesco, which premiered in Rome on Wednesday.
“What we have to create is a civil union law,” he said, adding that in the past, he “stood up” for same-sex couples seeking civil unions, an apparent reference to his support for civil unions while archbishop of Buenos Aires.
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family,” the pope said in the documentary. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it.”
Francis’s remarks do not change church teaching on gay unions, which have always been prohibited. The pope, however, has long held that accepting gay civil unions is a way for the church to accept gay couples without endorsing their union as a sacramental marriage. As Argentina moved toward legalizing gay marriage in 2010, Francis led the charge against the measure, while in private pushed other cardinals to make a compromise on the issue.
As pope, he addressed the issue again in more general terms. While reaffirming that the church teaches that marriage is between “a man and a woman,” Francis told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2014 that there are a number of pragmatic reasons to accept gay civil unions.
“We must consider different cases and evaluate each particular case,” he said.
At the time, the comment incensed many more conservative voices in the church. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is the archbishop of New York City, warned Catholics during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that acknowledging civil unions would “water down” teaching on marriage.
Francis’s two predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II, often spoke out against gay marriage, which during their tenures became widely accepted in many countries. The Vatican in 2003, as John Paul II’s papacy waned, released a document unequivocally opposing gay marriage and gay unions more broadly.
The document, however, stated that when Catholics in public life face no other alternatives on the issue of gay marriage, supporting civil unions is permissible if the decision “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.”
