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The Pope’s words were echoed in the documentary Francesco, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival on Wednesday.
“Homosexuals have the right to be in the family. They are children of God. We only need to have a civil union law for their relationship to be legalized,” Pope Francis said in an interview with one of the filmmakers.
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As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francisco supported civil unions for homosexual couples as an alternative to same-sex marriage. However, as pope, he has never spoken out in favor of same-sex civil unions.
Jesuit priest James Martin, one of the most active advocates of homosexuals in the church, called the pope’s comments “an important step in the church’s support of the LGBT community.”
“The Pope speaks positively about civil unions and also sends a strong message when the Church opposes such laws,” Martin said in a statement.
One of the main characters in the documentary is Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean victim of priest sexual abuse, whom the Pope interrogated during his visit to Chile in 2018.
JCCruz, who is homosexual, said that during the first meeting, Pope Francis told him that God had made him homosexual. From the excerpts from the JC Cruz story that appear throughout the film, one can learn about his own story, see how Pope Francis’ attitudes towards sexual exploitation and homosexuals have changed.
The film’s director, Yevgeny Afineevsky, surprisingly managed to reach the cardinals, access the Vatican television archives and the Pope himself. According to the director, the door was opened to him by his tenacious negotiations, and the Argentine saw alfachor cookies (alfajor), which he received for the Pope through the influential Argentines in Rome.
“Listen, when you’re in the Vatican, the only way to achieve anything is to break the rules and then just say ‘I’m sorry,'” Afineevsky said before the film’s premiere.
The director sought access to the Pope through formal and informal channels from the beginning of 2018, until finally, when the project came to an end, in August, he had already shown his film to the pontiff through his tablet. Recently, the two exchanged greetings on the occasion of the Yom Kippur celebration. Afineevsky is a Russian-born Jew living in Los Angeles.
However, the film “Francis” is more than a film about the biography of the Pope.
This was perfectly done by German director Wim Wenders in his 2018 documentary Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film “Francis” could be called a visual overview of world crises and tragedies, and the Pope’s audio recordings contain suggestions on how to overcome them.
In filming the film, Affineevsky traveled the world: he was in Bangladesh, home to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, on the US-Mexico border, and in Francis’ native Argentina.
“The film tells the story of the Pope with the cameras in the opposite direction,” said Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican’s communications director, one of the representatives of the Holy See who worked most closely with the director.
According to him, when he met J. Afinejevskis, who was ready to make the film, he tried not to give him much hope of talking to the Pope.
“I told him it would not be easy,” Ruffini said.
However, a Vatican official gave the director some advice: He pointed to people who were highly influenced even by the brief meeting with the Pope.
Afineevsky found them. These were the refugees Francis had met on his trips abroad, his blessed prisoners, and the homosexuals of whom he was a clergyman.
“I told him that many of those meetings were filmed by the Vatican cameras and there he would find a gold mine of true stories,” Ruffini said. “He will be able to tell the story of the Pope as everyone sees it, not just himself.”
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