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Pope Francis clarified this week that Catholic priests can bless individuals in same-sex couples but cautioned that such a blessing does not sanction the union and cannot resemble a marriage ceremony.
Couples in “irregular situations,” including same-sex relationships, can receive blessings that do not “sanction or legitimize” their unions, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which exists to defend Catholic doctrine, clarified in adocumentpublished Monday.
The document, called “Fiducia Supplicans,” was signed by Pope Francis as well as the Dicastery’s new prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.
Priests can give people in same-sex couples a “spontaneous blessing,” but the blessing cannot be a “liturgical” act or resemble the sacrament of marriage, the document says.
A blessing on people in same-sex couples cannot be given in connection with a civil union, and no “clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding” can be included in order “to avoid any form of confusion or scandal,” the document says.
“Rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage — which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’ — and what contradicts it are inadmissible,” the document warns.
