Speaking with the Catholic newspaper Crux, the pontiff said, “The church’s teaching will continue as it is” on marriage, stressing that matrimony remains between a man and a woman. At the same time, he acknowledged that blessings for couples outside the sacrament of marriage would remain possible.
“I’ve already spoken about marriage, as did Pope Francis when he was pope, about a family being a man and a woman in solemn commitment, blessed in the sacrament of marriage,” Leo said. “But even to say that, I understand some people will take that badly.”
He criticized practices in parts of Europe where priests have adopted rituals that look like marriage rites. “In Northern Europe they are already publishing rituals of blessing ‘people who love one another,’ is the way they express it, which goes specifically against the document that Pope Francis approved, Fiducia Supplicans,” he explained. That document, issued in December 2023, permitted priests to bless same-sex couples so long as the blessing did not look like a wedding.
The Vatican at the time made clear that while marriage is defined by the Church as between a man and a woman, blessings for same-sex couples or others in “irregular situations” could still be offered as a sign of pastoral care.
Pope Leo echoed that position, saying, “That doesn’t mean those people are bad people, but I think it’s very important, again, to understand how to accept others who are different than we are, how to accept people who make choices in their life and to respect them.”
