Although Pope Francis showed a favorable stance to the civil recognition of same-sex couples in November 2020, the Vatican has confirmed his rejection, explaining that "the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit." 

However, it opens the door to blessing homosexual persons on an individual basis. A document prepared by the team of Spanish Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria and his secretary, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, confirms this statement. 

With this starting point, the document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks to differentiate between unions and persons. They thus explain that "a negative judgment on the blessings of same-sex unions does not imply a judgment on persons." 

At the same time, the Holy See confirmed that Pope Francis "has given his consent" to this explanatory note.

The sentence does not allow priests to bless same-sex unions, and reiterates that the Church also denies blessing to all couples living together outside of marriage. 

"Any union that involves an exercise of sexuality outside of marriage is illicit from the moral point of view, according to what the uninterrupted ecclesial magisterium teaches," it ruled. 

Catholic doctrine recalls in the document that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman, is part of God's plan, and is destined to create new life. Since same-sex unions are not part of that plan, they cannot be blessed by the Church, the document says.

For his part, Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, advocates greater acceptance of members of the LGBTQ+ community in the Church, and predicted that the Vatican position would be ignored, even by some Catholic clergy.

It is worth remembering that Pope Francis himself has expressly said that "what we have to do is a law of civil cohabitation. They have the right to be legally covered. I defended that." The LGBT Catholic community is left to await these changes.