Last week, the pope made headlines by saying that he was open to legal civil unions between people of the same sex. While this does not change the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, as the Reverend James Martin pointed out in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, it does represent a marked change of tone in attitudes toward the LGBTQ community from the leader of the world's largest Christian church.
The following day, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's official response extinguished any expansive interpretation of the pope's message.
He pointed out that in January he and other nearby bishops had an audience with the "Holy Father [who] clearly differentiated between a civil arrangement.