Pope Francis said in a television interview with a Mexican journalist that if Christians “were to convince” themselves that homosexuals and those in “irregular” relationships are “children of God, things would change a lot.”
Televisa journalist Valentina Alazraki had asked the Pope in an interview published May 28 about persons in “irregular” relationships as well as homosexual partners receiving Holy Communion (read full question and answer below).
“But they are all children of God, we are all children of God. All of them. I can’t rule anyone out [descartar],” he said.
“Nor can I tell a person that his behavior is in accord to what the Church wants…I can’t tell a person that his behavior is according to what the Church wants…But I do have to tell him the truth: ‘You are a child of God and God wants you that way, now, get right with God’. I have no right to tell anyone that he is not a child of God because he would miss the truth. Nor to tell anyone that God doesn’t love him, because God loves them all, He even loved Judas,” he added.
Saying that in his exhortation Amoris laetitia he calls on enquirers to consult a priest and thus seek a “way” forward, the Pope said that he would not rule “from 12,000 kilometers away” whether or not someone should receive Holy Communion because it would be “irresponsible.”
He said it would be a case of “casuistry” that he cannot accept.
The Pope also said he was “angry” over media reports that he suggested that parents should consult a “psychiatrist” for counseling children with same-sex attraction. He said that what he meant was a “professional,” adding that parents have a right to “recognize that son as homosexual, that daughter as homosexual.”
“You can’t throw anyone out of the family or make life impossible because of that,” he said.
The Pope was referring to an August 2018 exchange he had with journalists that stirred widespread indignation among LGBT activists. While returning from the World Conference of Families in Ireland, he said that much “can be done through psychiatry” when parents notice homosexual behaviors in their children. When LGBTQ activists objected, Vatican officials later released a scrubbed text that removed the reference to psychiatry.
Although he told journalists in 2018 that parents may consult a psychiatrist in their children’s case, the Pope told Alazraki “I should have said ‘professional’, I said ‘psychiatrist’. I meant a professional because sometimes there are signs in adolescence or pre-adolescence that they don’t know are from a homosexual tendency or if the thymus gland didn’t atrophy in time, I don’t know, a thousand things, right?” Objecting to news headlines such as “Pope sends homosexuals to psychiatrist,” he insisted that it was not true. Repeating that homosexuals are “children of God,” he objected to having his words “taken out of context.”
While the Pope repeated that he wants to tell homosexuals that they deserve a family, this “doesn’t mean approving homosexual acts, far from it.”
[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Martin M. Barillas and originally published at LifeSite News. Title changed by P&P.]
