Bishops will not offer blessings of homosexual ‘couples’ anywhere in Africa
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Cardinal Ambongo’s letter declared that none of the Catholic bishops in Africa and Madagascar will offer blessings to homosexual couples.
(LifeSiteNews) — The president of the episcopal conferences of Africa and Madagascar has declared that the Catholic bishops in the continent will not be implementing Fiducia Supplicans’ blessing of same-sex couples, as to do so would contradict African culture which is “deeply rooted in the values of the natural law regarding marriage and family.”
In a letter dated and issued January 11, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo presented the continental response to CDF prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández’s December 18 text proposing blessings for same-sex couples.
While noting how the amassed episcopal conferences of Africa had “strongly reaffirmed their Communion” with Pope Francis, Ambongo stated that the bishops remained united in their position opposing same-sex blessings.
#BREAKING Cdl. Ambongo (pres of African bishops’ conferences) says Africa’s bishops won’t implement Fiducia Supplicans, over “confusion..scandal” it would cause in African society & text is in “direct contradiction” with African culture.
Says position is approved by #PopeFrancis. pic.twitter.com/ViWlTsuR5j— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) January 11, 2024
Such blessings could not take place without causing “scandals,” and since the Church’s teaching “on marriage and sexuality remains unchanged,” the letter declared that:
we, the African bishops, do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities.
Offering blessings to those in same-sex relationships would make it “very difficult to be convincing that people of the same sex who live in a stable union do not claim the legitimacy of their own status.”
Instead, the bishops stated they “insist on the call for the conversion of all.”
This position Ambongo rooted firmly in Scripture once more, drawing from the Gospels to re-iterate Christ’s command to “go and sin no more” and adding:
As the salt of the earth and light of the world, the merciful mission of the church is to go against the tide of the spirit of the world, and to offer it the best, even if it is demanding.
Ambongo, who is president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) and Archbishop of Kinshasa, highlighted especially that numerous responses from individual bishops and conferences had noted the Scriptural condemnation of homosexual activity.
Drawing also on the Vatican’s 1975 document Persona Humana, Ambongo wrote that “the constant teaching of the Church describes homosexual acts as ‘intrinsically disordered.’”