Pope Francis has endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time since taking the papal position.
The approval came halfway through a feature-length documentary, titled Francesco, which had its premiere at the Rome Film Festival.
The film delves into topics Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by prejudice.
Francis said in one of his sit down interviews for the film that homosexual people have the right to be in a family and that they were the children of God, and he continued that what we have to have is a civil union law, that way they are legally protected.
Francis’s predecessors, including Benedict XVI and John Paul II, denounced same-sex marriage during their papal tenure.
While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis supported civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriage. However, he had never come out publicly in acceptance of civil unions as pope until now.
Director Evgeny Afineevsky had remarkable access to cardinals, the Vatican television archives and the pope himself and he said he negotiated his way in through perseverance, and deliveries of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he got to the pope via some well connected Argentines in Rome.
The premiere comes after the Pope applauded a breastfeeding mother as he reverted to going without a coronavirus face mask during the Vatican general audience.
Francis mentioned Switzerland’s Valentina Frey at the beginning of the audience in the Paul VI hall while she breastfed her daughter Charlotte Katharina.
He said the act was an illustration of affection and beauty before continuing his address.
The Pope said that something grabbed his attention while the readers were reciting the Biblical passages and there was the baby over there that was crying.
He said that he was looking at the mother who was nursing the baby and consoling her and he said he was thinking about how God is like this was us. How he often endeavours to console us and nurse us and that it was a beautiful vision when this is happening in the church and we hear the baby crying and we see the mother’s tenderness.
And he thanked her for her witness and said that the tenderness of a mother is a sign of God’s tenderness with us and that we should never silence a baby in the church because this is the voice that attracts God’s tenderness.
There are numerous people out there that will say that God or Jesus doesn’t exist, but then I guess in 2,000 years our predecessors will say that we didn’t exist either, but at least Jesus and God was written about.
However, there have been stories about Harry Potter, princesses locked in towers with long hair and walking bears that sit and eat porridge, but many prominent stories lack the whole validity element.
Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man. Living in the sky and watches everything you do, every minute of every day.
This invisible man has a unique list of ten things he doesn’t want you to do, and if you do any of those ten things, he has a special place, full of fire, smoke, burning, suffering and despair.
And he will send you to live in that special place to suffer, burn, choke, scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time – but he loves you! And he needs money, he always needs money.
