Pope Francis’s Unofficial Revolution

Pope Francis hasn’t changed a word of this teaching since his election in 2013. But he has dramatically shifted perceptions of the church’s stand on the subject—most recently with a statement endorsing civil unions for same-sex couples, which appears in a documentary that premiered at the Rome Film Festival last month.

“The Holy Father has changed the tone, the approach and the conversation around the issue of LGBTQ Catholics,” said the Rev. James Martin, author of “Building a Bridge,” a book about the church’s relationship with gay people. “He is not changing doctrine, but he is changing the conversation, and that is a form of teaching,” Father Martin said.

Critics warn that official Catholic teaching can’t retain its authority for long when the leader of the church makes widely reported statements in marked contrast to it. “Many people now feel authorized to freely make divisive arguments without feeling bound by the teaching of the church, which is still there but is not worth as much as before,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert who writes for Italy’s L’Espresso magazine. “Everyone can say what they like because the first person to do so is the pope.”

Pope Francis’s statement about civil unions is the latest of a series of high-profile comments and gestures that started with what remain the most famous words of his pontificate. In 2013, he responded to a reporter’s question about gay priests by asking, “Who am I to judge?”

Since then, the pope has met with a same-sex couple in Washington, D.C., and with a transgender man in the Vatican, referring to the latter as “he who had been she but is he.” He has said publicly that the Catholic Church should apologize for having marginalized gay people and, according to a sexual-abuse survivor who met with him privately, told the man that God had made him gay.

The latest episode could be the most consequential so far. “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it,” Pope Francis says in the new film, “Francesco,” directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. “What we have to create is a civil-union law. They have the right to be legally covered. I defended that.”

Pope Francis’s statement about civil unions is the latest of a series of high-profile comments and gestures that started with what remain the most famous words of his pontificate. In 2013, he responded to a reporter’s question about gay priests by asking, “Who am I to judge?”

Since then, the pope has met with a same-sex couple in Washington, D.C., and with a transgender man in the Vatican, referring to the latter as “he who had been she but is he.” He has said publicly that the Catholic Church should apologize for having marginalized gay people and, according to a sexual-abuse survivor who met with him privately, told the man that God had made him gay.

The latest episode could be the most consequential so far. “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it,” Pope Francis says in the new film, “Francesco,” directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. “What we have to create is a civil-union law. They have the right to be legally covered. I defended that.”

Although it was widely known that the pope supported civil unions when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he had not unequivocally endorsed them as pope until now. Commentators have said the remarks could put pressure on bishops in the developing world to support legal recognition of same-sex couples and, particularly in some African countries, to oppose harsh anti-homosexuality laws. In wealthier regions, the pope’s words could encourage a softer line from church-affiliated agencies that have resisted extending employment benefits to same-sex spouses or allowing gay couples to adopt children.

German bishops who favor the blessing of same-sex unions could draw support from the pope’s statement, Father Martin said, and public officials in the U.S. could conclude that the church’s position on legal recognition of same-sex couples is not as clear-cut as they previously believed.

The pope’s words quickly drew heavy criticism from conservative church leaders. “Such declarations generate great bewilderment and cause confusion and error among Catholic faithful,” wrote U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a prominent critic of Pope Francis. “They cause wonderment and error regarding the Church’s teaching.”

The cardinal said that the “context and the occasion” of the pope’s words, presumably meaning their presence in a filmed interview, deprived them of any weight as official teaching: “They are rightly interpreted as simple private opinions of the person who made them.” Cardinal Burke cited a 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrinal office, then headed by the future Pope Benedict XVI, which states that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.” Pope Francis cited another portion of the same text in a 2016 document of his own.

Part of the controversy surrounding the pope’s words in the film, originally spoken in an interview with a Mexican television network in 2019 though not broadcast in their entirety at the time, concerns the charge that they were misleadingly edited by Mr. Afineevsky. In their original context, the section of the pope’s remarks regarding gays and families concerned the need for parents not to reject their gay children. In “Francesco,” which includes an account of the pope’s encouragement to a gay man raising children with his husband, the statement might also seem to be affirming the rights of gay people to form families of their own, Mr. Magister says.

The day after Pope Francis’ words on civil unions made headlines world-wide, Mr. Afineevsky, the director, received an award for the film at a ceremony in the Vatican Gardens, in the presence of the Holy See’s head of communications.

The closest thing to a public clarification from the Vatican came more than a week later, when the pope’s envoy to Mexico posted on his personal Facebook page a statement that a Vatican source later confirmed had been provided to its diplomats abroad. The statement, which said that the edited version of the pope’s words in the documentary had “generated confusion,” emphasized the pope’s opposition to same-sex marriage and noted that his comments on civil unions referred to “certain provisions of the state, certainly not to the doctrine of the Church.”

This is not the first time that Pope Francis’s public statements have created ambiguity about Catholic teaching on a contentious topic. Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the church’s traditional prohibition of artificial birth control in the 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” a document that the current pope has praised as prophetic. But in 2016, Pope Francis told reporters that the use of contraception could be used to prevent birth defects caused by the Zika virus. His spokesman then explained that the pope meant a Catholic could rely on a “well-formed conscience” to decide whether to use “contraception or condoms” in “situations of grave urgency.”

As Mr. Magister sees it, the long-term strategy behind the pope’s bypassing of doctrinal channels is to prepare the ground for eventual changes in formal teaching. “He tosses out these ideas without arguing in any way, to start a process that might develop slowly over time and eventually produce supporting arguments and official documents of the church’s magisterium incorporating these novelties,” Mr. Magister said. “He is a sower of novelties.”

Father Martin takes another view. “I don’t think Pope Francis is looking to change church teaching on homosexuality, but he’s reminding us that it needs to be applied in a particular way…a more compassionate way,” he said.