These statements come from a documentary, "Francesco" presented this Wednesday at the Rome Film Festival.
Asked for this film, Pope Francis pleaded for "a law of civil union", which would benefit gay couples.
The Argentinian, who has always been open to homosexual couples, asserting that they should be welcomed within the Catholic Church, however remains firmly opposed to gay “marriage” which must take place, according to him, necessarily between a man and a woman.
In the documentary, Jorge Mario Bergoglio says he wants to defend the right for these couples, "children of God", to live within a "civil union" which protects them legally.
The Sovereign Pontiff also insists that homosexual people “have the right to a family”.
“What is needed is a civil union law, they have the right to be legally covered.
I defended that ”, he underlined in this documentary directed by Evgeny Afineevsky.
A phone call with a gay father
Since his election as pope, Francis had already mentioned, without rejection, the notion of civil unions for people of the same sex.
In the documentary unveiled this Wednesday, however, he pleads with unprecedented force for this legal model.
His statements in Spanish follow in the film the testimony of a homosexual, father of three, who asked him in a letter if they should attend church.
The Pope then called him on the phone to advise him to be transparent about his choice of life in his parish and to bring his children there.
Controversial comments in 2018
Two years ago, however, the Pope had made awkward statements about LGBT people, implicitly believing that homosexuality was a pathology, before the Vatican backed down and changed its verbatim.
In August 2018, he recommended that parents of gay children see a psychiatrist.
"I would tell them first of all to pray, not to condemn, to dialogue, to understand, to give a place to the son or the daughter", he had argued in front of journalists.
With a distinction according to age: “When this manifests itself from childhood, there are a lot of things to do by psychiatry, to see how things are.
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