The words of Pope Francis in which he has surprised asking that gay couples have access to civil union laws that regulate their situation have generated a great stir outside and inside the Vatican.
The statements, contained in the documentary
Francesco
, they met yesterday at the film's premiere at the Rome film festival.
It was to be hoped that the conservative sector did not welcome such an opening.
Also that his closest friends, always concerned about the controversies generated by his spontaneity, reduce the impact of the opening.
But according to the AP published on Thursday, the problem is that the cut of the documentary where Francisco would have said those words would actually belong to an interview carried out in May 2019 with the Televisa network.
However, that part of the conversation was never broadcast.
The question now is whether there could be a censorship at the time or was the chain itself who discarded them.
Francisco points out in a fragment of the documentary that homosexuals have the right to legal coverage to regulate their situation.
But it goes further and touches key concepts of Catholicism.
Homosexuals have the right to be in a family.
What should be there is a civil union law, that way they are legally covered, "he says.
Some statements that, as explained by Father Antonio Spadaro, very close to Francisco, were not new because they could have been made in a previous interview.
Part of the documentary by the Russian Evgeny Afineevsky is made with archival audiovisual fragments.
Spadaro explained it yesterday.
"The director gathers a series of interviews that were made to the Pope during the time to give a great synthesis of his pontificate and the value of his travels", reveals the director of the magazine
La Civiltà Cattolica
.
The religious also pointed out that the part in which he talks about homosexuals is taken from an interview he offered in May 2019 to the Televisa correspondent, the Mexican Valentina Alazraki.
The problem is that the Pope's words about homosexual civil unions do not appear in the final cut of the interview published by Alazraki.
Nor in the transcript that the Holy See sent to the media after its publication.
Neither the journalist nor the chain made any comment on the matter yesterday.
The Vatican usually reviews interviews with the Pope and reserves the right to edit some aspects.
And in the approved and disseminated text, the Pope stated: “They asked me a question on a flight - later it made me angry, it made me angry because of the way a medium transmitted it - about the family integration of people with homosexual orientation, and I said : Gay people have the right to be in the family, people with a homosexual orientation have the right to be in the family and parents have the right to recognize that son as homosexual, that daughter as homosexual.
No one can be thrown out of the family or make life impossible for that reason ”.
The meaning of Francisco's words, which in no case opens the door to homosexual marriage, do not change.
Ultimately, the Vatican should also have reviewed the Afineevsky documentary and gave its approval to the inclusion of that fragment.
So Francisco's support is beyond question.
But the situation was even stranger when the author of the documentary went to the Vatican on Thursday afternoon to receive the Kineo prize for cinema in the category of Film for Humanity.
The Holy See, whose chief communication officer, Paolo Ruffini, was at the event, did not comment at all at that time or later.
The Pontiff's spokesman, asked about this newspaper, also declined to give an explanation for the time being.