Pope Francis on Wednesday called on parents around the world to not
condemn children if they are gay.
Francis made the comments while speaking about the biblical figure Joseph
during his weekly general audience. He addressed parents facing difficult
situations in the lives of their children, such as kids who are sick,
imprisoned or killed in car accidents.
But he also addressed parents "who see that their children have different
sexual orientations, how they manage that and accompany their children and
not hide behind a condemning attitude.”
“Never condemn a child,” he said.
Church teachings consider homosexual activity “intrinsically disordered,”
though it calls for gay and lesbian people to be respected.
In 2013, Francis said he would not "judge" gay priests, telling reporters,
“If someone is gay, and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am
I to judge?”
He has also called gay and transgender people children of God and endorsed
civil unions.
"Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of
God," Francis said in an interview for the 2020 documentary “Francesco.”
"You can't kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for
this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally
covered."
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But the Vatican said last year that the Catholic Church and its priests
cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.”
"There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be
in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family,” the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, said in a two-page statement that was approved by
Francis.
Contributing: The Associated Press
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/01/26/pope-francis-parents-
should-never-condemn-gay-children/9227983002/