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The Vatican Secretariat of State distributed an explanatory document to the ambassadors in response to the noise made by the pontiff’s comments after the premiere of the documentary Francisco at the Rome Film Festival on October 21. The Vatican’s nuncio to Mexico, Archbishop Franco Coppola posted unsigned guidelines on his Facebook account on Sunday.
In these guidelines, the Vatican confirmed that Francis had in mind his position, which he held in 2010 when he was still Archbishop of Buenos Aires and spoke out strongly against same-sex marriages. However, former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio supported the extension of legal protection for people of the same sex. In Argentina, this is understood as the civil union law.
Francis held this position privately and, upon becoming pope, never publicly declared his support. Those comments from the pontiff received so much attention mainly because in 2003 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document prohibiting such support. A document signed by Francis’ predecessor states that the Church’s support for homosexuals “can in no way lead to acceptance of homosexual behavior or legal recognition of same-sex unions.”
The noise became even more noticeable when it became clear that documentary filmmaker Yevgeny Afineevsky had misled journalists by claiming that Francis had made these comments in a new interview with him.
A week before the film’s release, the AP news agency asked about the comments on civil unions, the director said, filming two interviews with the Holy Father. After communicating with journalists after the premiere, J.Afinejevskis claimed that the images mentioned with comments on civil unions were taken from an interview with the Pope conducted in the presence of an interpreter.
Finally, it turned out that the comments were taken from an interview granted in May 2019 to the pontificate Mexican station Televisa, which was not shown. The Vatican did not confirm, but did not deny, the information published in Mexico that the Holy See cut a quote from an interview filmed by Vatican cameras and sent to Televista.
The guidelines issued by the Vatican Secretariat do not mention the cut quote or the fact that it was an interview with Televisa. The guidelines simply state that this was said in an interview given in 2019, and the comments heard in the documentary are, in fact, a combination of two separate responses presented without essential context.
“In an interview over a year ago, Pope Francis answered two separate questions at different times. In the documentary, those responses were assembled and published as a single response without proper contextualization, and this generated confusion, ”the explanatory document reads.
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