- STATEMENT OF CARDINAL BURKE
Pope's declarations on gay unions demand Bishops clarify Catholic teaching
- Ecclesia
- 22-10-2020
A statement of Cardinal Leo Burke. "The worldwide communications media have reported with strong emphasis, as a change of course, the news that Pope Francis has declared that persons in the homosexual condition, as children of God, 'have a right to have a family' and that 'no one should be thrown out or be made unhappy because of it'. Moreover, they write that he has declared: 'What we have to create is a civil union. In this way they will be legally covered. I have defended this'. The context and the occasion of such declarations make them devoid of any magisterial weight. They are rightly interpreted as simple private opinions. It is a source of deepest sadness and pressing pastoral concern that the private opinions reported with so much emphasis by the press and attributed to Pope Francis do not correspond to the constant teaching of the Church".