The Vatican is seeking to clarify comments regarding same-sex civil unions made by Pope Francis.
The comments, made in the film “Francesco” which premiered on Oct. 21 at the Rome Film Festival, were taken out of context, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State wrote in a letter to its ambassadors dated Oct. 30, according to CNN.
Pope Francis’ comments were from a Mexico Televisa interview in 2019. The Vatican clarified that the comments in the film were answers to two different questions and we spliced to seem like one, leaving out context.
The letter reads, “More than a year ago, during an interview, Pope Francis answered two different questions at two different times that, in the aforementioned documentary, were edited and published as a single answer without the proper contextualization, which has led to confusion.”
As CNN reports, “The Vatican’s clarification says that the Pope was speaking about his opposition to a same-sex marriage law in Argentina ten years ago when the Pope was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.”
The letter also reads, “It is clear that Pope Francis was referring to certain provisions made by states, and certainly not to the doctrine of the Church, which he has reaffirmed numerous times over the years.”
The pope is heard in the documentary saying, “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”
Pope Francis added, “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.”
However, the letter states that the pope meant that “a son or daughter with a homosexual orientation should never be discriminated against within the family.”