Angelus News | January 12, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 1

issues and the hurts experienced by
people identifying as LGBT+ have
certainly been heard very loudly
within the Church. I do hope that
people who may have felt excluded
in the past, will see this as some step
toward them with the love and mercy
of Christ.
The pope is very much exercising his
pastoral role in accompanying people.
One of the great gifts of the priesthood
is being able to offer people a blessing.
These informal, pastoral, but beautiful
moments, where you are able to bless
someone where they are at, is something
we do every day as a priest.
This particular declaration makes
somebody like me or any priest a little
bit more comfortable that they can do
this without feeling, “Am I contradicting
the teaching of the Church?” So,
there is a clarity here, which I think
will help pastors on the ground.
Bishop José Ignacio Munilla,
Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, Spain
I would have expected another way
of approaching the subject. I believe
that a mistake has been made by not
consulting the entire episcopate,
especially when pastoral reasons are
alleged in the declaration.
It’s surprising that they did not
proceed in a synodal manner, in line
Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Northern
Ireland, blesses delegates during a prayer walk at a
pre-synodal assembly in the sixth-century monastic
site of Clonmacnoise in Ireland June 18, 2022. |
CNS/CLODAGH KILCOYNE, REUTERS
with the ecclesiology of the Second
Vatican Council. We would have
been spared the dissenting reactions
of episcopal conferences that we are
witnessing, for example.
There would be no problem in performing
a blessing, carried out in the
privacy of pastoral accompaniment,
with a formulation along the following
lines:
“Lord, bless your children N. and N.,
and grant them to continue walking
in humility, so that at the same time
that they recognize your gifts, they
also recognize that their union is not
in accordance with your design. Pour
out upon them your grace, for them to
become coherent in their lives and accept
with courage and determination
your call to conversion. Amen.”
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop
of Bologna and President of the
Bishops’ Conference of Italy
Some things you can say after you
have made people feel at home again.
So it will be possible to learn the rules
— beautiful — of a home from which
you were estranged, which you think
you do not understand and which is
not understood.
The Church communicates the love
that explains the rule and makes it
alive, and this is done by reestablishing
a relationship with everyone. The
world is not black and white and requires
listening, discernment, acceptance.
Someone may think: this way
you lose the truth. In contrast, no, this
is how you rediscover it: by living, by
encountering, by talking about Jesus.
And you discover that Christianity has
deeper roots than you think.
The altar is draped with a rainbow flag during the
blessing service “Love Wins” in the Church of St.
Martin in Geldern, Germany, in 2021. For the last
several years, many Catholic leaders in the country
have been pushing the Vatican to change its teaching
on marriage and sexuality to be more open to samesex
couples. | CNS/RUDOLF WICHERT, KNA
14 • ANGELUS • January 12, 2024