ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 27, 2023 / 16:00 pm
Cardinal Daniel Sturla, archbishop of Montevideo, Uruguay, said in a recent interview that the Fiducia Supplicans declaration from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which allows the blessing of homosexual couples, “was not the kind of topic to come out now at Christmas” because it’s “controversial” and the text “creates confusion.”
“I don’t think it was a topic to be brought out now at Christmas. It really caught my attention, because it’s a controversial issue and it’s creating divisions within the Church,” said the 64-year-old Salesian cardinal, who serves in the most secularized country in Latin America, where Christmas hasn’t been officially celebrated since 1919.
The declaration Fiducia Supplicans, published on Dec. 18 with the approval of Pope Francis, has drawn positive and negative reactions from bishops around the world. With the document, the Vatican allows priests to impart nonliturgical blessings to same-sex couples and heterosexual couples in an irregular relationship without this being an approval of their lifestyle.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the dicastery, wrote in the presentation of the document that the traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church on marriage “remains firm” and that in no way can blessings for homosexual couples or couples in an irregular situation “officially validate their status or alter in any way the perennial teaching of the Church” in this regard.