The Vatican has denied Pope Francis' statements in favor of civil unions
An explanatory note from the Holy See explained that Bergoglio's statements in Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary were extrapolated from a different context. The revolution in the Catholic Church is still a long way off
(photo: Claudio Peri / Pool / Afp via Getty Images) On 21 October, during the Rome Film Festival, Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary entitled Francesco and dedicated to the current pontiff of the Catholic Church had created great resonance in the press around the world due to some comments expressed in the feature film by Pope Francis with a lgbt + theme. According to what was reported two weeks ago, the Vatican leader had declared: “Homosexuals have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have the right to a family ”. And then: “What we have to create is a law on civil unions. In this way, homosexuals would enjoy legal coverage ”.Today the Vatican has denied any openness of the Catholic Church's doctrine regarding LGBT + unions (or the LGBT + community in general). At the end of October, the Vatican Secretariat of State sent an explanatory note to its ambassadors, to be forwarded to the bishops (the apostolic nuncio to Mexico Franco Coppola also posted it on his Facebook profile): the sentence pronounced by Pope Francis in the feature film by Afineevsky would have been obtained by combining two different quotes in response to separate questions, thus completely decontextualizing the words of the pontiff.
The images mounted in the 2020 documentary would have been extrapolated from the unpublished material of an interview given by Francesco to the Mexican network Televisa in 2019, despite having been presented as original material filmed by Afineevsky himself (who had declared that he had personally interviewed by the pope). According to the Vatican note, the first quotation on the right of homosexuals to “be in a family”, in fact, referred to the fact of being accepted into one's family of origin, not of forming a new one through marriage. Furthermore, in Afineevsky's film the parts of the interview in which Pope Francis underlines his opposition to LGBT + religious unions have been cut, with phrases such as: "It is an incongruity to speak of same-sex marriage".
"It is clear that Pope Francis was referring to certain provisions of the state and certainly not to the doctrine of the Church, which he has reaffirmed numerous times over the years", explained the Holy See. That is, that homosexuals must be treated with respect but the acts performed by them are in any case to be considered sinful for the purposes of faith. After the premiere of the documentary, director Afineevsky refused to discuss the editing process of his work and the Reuters news agency reports that it was unable to contact him for comment on the Vatican note.
