Pope’s Shift on Gay Couples Followed Quiet Talks and Loud Resistance
In March 2021, as stunned L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics grappled with a Vatican document approved by Pope Francis that ruled against blessing same-sex unions, one of his confidants, who is gay, says they spoke on the phone.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a sexual abuse survivor who had befriended the pope over years of conversations, says that Francis, who had just returned from Iraq, gave him the sense that the Vatican “machine” had gotten ahead of him in the ruling; it stated that God “cannot bless sin.” But he says Francis “acknowledged that the buck stops with him.
I got the impression that he wanted to fix it.” For Mr. Cruz, who visited Francis for his 87th birthday over the weekend, and for many L.G.B.T.Q.
Catholics, Francis did just that this week. He signed off on a major declaration by the same Vatican office on church doctrine that had issued the negative ruling two years before.
