America Magazine
September 24, 2021
As with much of his pastoral approach overall, the pope’s outreach to L.G.B.T. people can be characterized by the word “accompaniment.”
A few recent comments by Pope Francis highlight this new reality. Most recently, he spoke with Jesuits in Slovakia during his pastoral trip there and affirmed the need for “pastoral care for homosexual couples,” while at the same time voicing his opposition to “gender ideology.”
During an in-flight press conference on the way back from Slovakia, he said, “If a homosexual couple wants to lead a life together, the state has the possibility to give them safety, stability, inheritance.” In the same response, he also affirmed the Catholic Church’s traditional stance on marriage: In the church, it is a sacrament reserved for a man and a woman.