VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., claimed today that Fiducia Supplicans is a “very beautiful” document, adding that “blessings” for homosexual “couples” now do not need to be discussed by the Synod on Synodality.
“I find it very beautiful because it means God loves everyone, including those in irregular situations,” Cardinal Hollerich said about the heterodox text, speaking at a March 14 press conference for the Synod on Synodality, of which he is relator general.
“It’s truly a pastoral document, it isn’t a doctrinal document,” he added.
BREAKING: Cdl. Hollerich now on Fiducia Supplicans “I find it very beautiful because it means God loves everyone including those in irregular situations. It’s truly a pastoral document it isn’t a doctrinal document.
I think what the CDF with the authority of the Pope have already… pic.twitter.com/Wi8mvHrGZ5— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) March 14, 2024
Hollerich stated that Fiducia Supplicans – released by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2023 – is “an initiative that helps me in my pastoral context.”
He forestalled any plans for the topic of homosexual “blessings” to be raised at the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality, saying that the matter is now closed. “I think what the CDF with the authority of the pope have already decided is not something we should go back and discuss in the Synod.”
Prior to the surprise publication of Fiducia Supplicans in December, it had been claimed by Synod voting member Cardinal Leonardo Steiner that Pope Francis had tasked the October 2024 meeting to address the topic specifically.
READ: Pope Francis reportedly tasked next year’s Synod with addressing same-sex ‘blessings’
Asked by this reporter if he anticipated a change in Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality or such “blessings,” Steiner replied “it is a wish of the Holy Father that the next session will look to that, but it is a good thing that this debate has come up on these topics.” Steiner has himself gone on record advocating for same-sex issues, including homosexual civil unions.
In 2022 Hollerich condemned as “false” the Church’s denouncement of homosexual acts as sinful, and then claimed that his thoughts on homosexuality were “in full agreement with Pope Francis.”
Only weeks later, he told LifeSiteNews that “I’m not in favor of changing any doctrine.” Instead, he said he was in favor of “a Church in which everybody can feel welcome.”
Then he later criticized Catholic teaching on homosexuality again, declaring that he thinks Church teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered is “a bit dubious” and falsely suggesting that it is “impossible” for some people not to commit sodomy.
READ: Cardinal Hollerich voices support for ‘blessings’ of same-sex ‘couples,’ questions priestly celibacy
Commenting on Fiducia Supplicans last month, Hollerich again displayed his union with the pope’s idea regarding homosexual “blessings,” stating that “I am absolutely on the same line as the pope.”
Speaking to this reporter in April 2023, Hollerich downplayed the suggestion that LGBT or homosexual issues would be a focus of the Synod on Synodality. The multi-year event is on “synodality, and it’s not homosexuality, it’s not on women’s ordination,” he said.
“It has a very defined topic: synodality, communion, participation, and mission,” the cardinal stated in 2023.
Expanding on the topic of homosexuality, Hollerich added how his “care” for the synod enabled him to “distinguish perhaps private issues I have, and what the pope has asked from me. There will be no mixing of these things.”
READ: Cardinal Müller: Synod is about ‘preparing us to accept homosexuality,’ women’s ordination
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1986 document “On the pastoral care of homosexual persons,” states that a “truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
This is echoed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches that: “‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC 2357)
Issued under former prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., the CDF’s 2021 note ruled out the possibility of blessing “unions of persons of the same-sex,” saying that the Church does not “power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.”
The CDF stated that it is “not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”