Pope Francis said people criminalizing homosexual acts are “wrong” after the pontiff was criticized for saying that homosexuality is “not a crime, but a sin.”
- The letter, written by 86-year-old Pope Francis, claims that his comments are about Catholic moral teaching, which says that any sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a sin.
- Pope Francis, who was appointed in 2013, said it was wrong to criminalize homosexuality.
Pope Francis said people criminalizing homosexual activity are “wrong” in a letter released Saturday.
The letter, written to a Jesuit priest, comes after the Pope said this week that homosexuality is “not a crime” but “it is a sin.” This was written to clarify his comments in an interview with the Associated Press news agency on Wednesday.
The letter is intended to “clarify that it (homosexuality) is not a crime, to emphasize that criminalization is neither good nor fair,” it says.
“When I said it was a sin, I simply meant the Catholic moral teaching that any sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” he wrote.
Pope Francis, 86 (pictured), said people criminalizing homosexual acts are “wrong”.
The 86-year-old was responding to a letter from American clergyman James Martin, who asked for clarification after the interview. Written in Spanish, it read: “I would tell anyone who wants to criminalize homosexuality that they are wrong.”
The letter was translated into English and published on the Outreach website, a Catholic LGBTQ resource edited by Mr. Martin.
In an interview on Wednesday, Pope Francis said: “It’s not a crime… but it’s a sin.” He added: “It is also a sin not to show mercy to one another.”
In his letter to Martin, Francis said that his comments about “sin” referred to general moral teaching in the Catholic Church.
“When I said it was a sin, I simply meant the Catholic moral teaching that any sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” he wrote.
“Of course, one must also consider circumstances that can reduce or eliminate guilt.”
“As you can see, I repeated something in general. I should have said, “It’s a sin, just like any sexual intercourse outside of marriage.”
The issue of homosexuality caused a split in the Catholic Church between modernizers and conservatives.
Pope Francis has sparked controversy since his appointment in 2013 for his relatively liberal stance on sexual orientation.
Although he often accepted gays and instructed them to be accepted into the church, he remains in line with Catholic teaching on marriage, according to which marriage is between a man and a woman for procreation.
Pope Francis has sparked controversy since his appointment in 2013 for his relatively liberal stance on sexual orientation.
In a June 2021 letter to Mr Marin, Pope Francis thanked the priest for his work in reaching out to LGBT people, writing that God “loves each of his children.”
Just a few months earlier, the Vatican had confirmed that it considered homosexuality a “sin” and that gays could not accept the sacrament of marriage.
His final comments came before a trip to Africa next week, where criminalization of homosexuality is commonplace. He plans to visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan as part of a six-day visit.
