Pope Francis faced a flood of doctrinal protests about blessings for gay couples, he returned to defend the document published on December 18, which stirred up an unprecedented uproar. The distinction that Bergoglio invites is that the intention is to bless homosexual people and not their relationship. A view that is still contested by eminent canonists, theologians, academics - not to mention bishops and cardinals from around the world - who in their respective interventions underline that there was then no need to dedicate an entire document to the blessings of individuals, because the Church already offers the possibility to all priests to bless anyone, even the most hardened sinners, obviously in the hope that God may help them to redeem themselves. What is disputed is the comparison of the homosexual relationship to marriage between a man and a woman, even though the document specifies ad nauseam that there has been and will be no change in doctrine. The fire that broke out, however, is destined to flare up further and will not easily be extinguished.
This morning Francis had to return to the subject to reassure. Speaking to the members of the Dicastery of Faith, he explained that 'the intention of pastoral and spontaneous blessings is to concretely show the closeness of the Lord and the Church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask for help to carry forward - sometimes to start - a journey of faith. I would like to briefly underline two things: the first is that these blessings, outside of any context and form of a liturgical nature, do not require moral perfection to be received; the second, that when a couple spontaneously approaches to ask for them, the union is not blessed, but simply the people who together have requested it. Not the union, but the people, naturally taking into account the context, sensitivities, places where they live and the most suitable ways to do it'.
Pope Francis in the rather articulated speech he gave this morning made no mention of the exception he himself gave to the African bishops and cardinals. To them the Pope has guaranteed the faculty to disregard the Fiducia Supplicans and not to bless gay couples considered on the continent a negative expression of the West. Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa, 64, president of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa (SECAM) and member of the C9 (a kind of crown council that supports the pontiff in the action of government), brought the instances of the African conferences to the Vatican. He was the one who leveraged and convinced Francis to manage in a Solomonian way the block contrary to the blessing of gay couples.
Cardinal Ambongo made it clear: 'Since the West does not love children, Westerners attack the basic cell of humanity which is the family formed by a man and a woman. But if you destroy that cell, you destroy society. The West is now a decadent society'.
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