Vatican.- The Pope Francis asked fathers and mothers not to condemn their children for being homosexual, in a gesture of approach to the LGBTQ community, which for so long has been marginalized by the Catholic Church.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke impromptu during his weekly Wednesday general audience dedicated to the figure of Saint Joseph, the father of Jesus. He said he was thinking in particular of parents facing “sad” situations in their children’s lives.
“Parents who see that their children have different sexual orientations, how they manage that and accompany their children and they don’t hide behind a condemning attitude,” he said, referring to parents dealing with children who are sick, incarcerated or killed in car accidents.
“never condemn a child”, underlined Pope Francis addressing parents with children from the LGBTQ community.
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Official church teachings call for respect and love for gays and lesbians, but it considers homosexual activity to be “inherently disordered.” Francis, however, has tried to make the church more welcoming to gays, most famously with his 2013 comment “Who am I to judge?”
The Argentine Jesuit has also spoken of his own ministry with homosexual and transgender people, insisting that they are children of God, loved by God and worthy of the accompaniment of the church.
Francis has also made several gestures of outreach to the gay Catholic community and its advocates, including a recent letter congratulating a once Vatican-sanctioned American nun, Sister Jeannine Gramick, on her 50 years of LGBTQ ministry.
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That said, Francis also allowed the 2021 release of a Vatican document stating that the Catholic Church will not bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin. Francis recently transferred the Vatican official believed to have been behind the document.
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