VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican opposes the criminalization of homosexuality carried out by some countries with the support of Catholic groups, the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office said on Monday.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez called laws punishing homosexuality a “big problem,” while reaffirming through a publication the Vatican’s opposition to sex reassignment, gender theory and surrogacy .
“Of course we are not in favor of criminalization,” he said.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, a liberal theologian named by Pope Francis to head the Vatican’s dicastery of the doctrine of the faith less than a year ago, told reporters it was “painful” to see some Catholics support anti-homosexuality laws.
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In February 2023, the pope declared that laws criminalizing LGBTQ people were a sin and an injustice, because God loves and accompanies people with same-sex attraction.
“The criminalization of homosexuality is a problem that cannot be ignored,” the pope said, citing statistics that 50 countries criminalize LGBTQ people “in one way or another” and a dozen more having laws providing for the death penalty.
In December, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez’s office released a landmark document authorizing the blessing of same-sex couples, sparking a sharp backlash from conservatives.
However, the Church officially teaches that homosexual acts “are inherently disordered.”
Responding to a question about the possibility of changing this formulation, Cardinal Fernandez said: “It is true that it is a very strong expression and it requires a lot of explanation, perhaps we could find a clearer one.
He added that the view of Catholic teaching was that homosexual acts cannot match the “immense beauty” of heterosexual unions, and that the Church “could find fairer words to express it.”
(Reporting Alvise Armellini, French version Nathan Vifflin, editing by Kate Entringer)
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