Rightwing priest rages at Pope Francis for creating blessing for “sodomy”

LGBTQ+ advocates are celebrating a declaration issued Monday confirming that Pope Francis has approved the blessing of same-sex unions – but not everyone is happy about this.

Many conservative religious leaders are up in arms over what they believe is now pressure to bless unions they believe are sinful. Despite the fact that blessing same-sex couples is not required, the New York Times reported that many fear there will be pressure to accept couples’ requests.

Related:

Pope Francis approves blessing same-sex couples in “major step forward”

The Catholic Church still maintains marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

“I will never confer a blessing upon two men or two women who are involved in a sexual relationship that is by its nature gravely sinful,” declared the Rev. Gerald Murray, pastor at Holy Family Church in New York and a Fox News regular. “The pope has placed priests who uphold Catholic doctrine about the immorality of sodomy and adultery into a terrible position.”

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Anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham is equally angry. “Pope Francis has now approved Catholic priests ‘blessing’ same-sex couples,” he wrote on X. “But none of us, including the Pope, has the right to ‘bless’ what God calls sin. ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…’ (Isaiah 5:20).”

The Times said that young priests in the U.S. today are even more conservative than the older bishops. The conservative Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, for example, expressed that if people read the Vatican’s declaration closely, they will see that “it encourages pastoral solicitude while maintaining fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The declaration does not amend “the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,” according to Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the office of the Doctrine of the Faith, because there is no liturgical rite that could be confused with the marriage sacrament. In other words, the Church still maintains that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

“It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing 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,” Fernández writes in an introduction to the declaration, “Fiducia Supplicans, On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings.”

He also said the decision to grant same-sex unions a blessing was “based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis” and described the change as “a real development.”

“Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God,” Fernández writes. “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.”