Africans were not the only ones who resisted the highly controversial 2023 Vatican declaration “Fiducia Supplicans”, a document that permits Catholic priests to give blessings to couples in “irregular situations,” including same-sex couples, without explicitly declaring church approval of their union.
This month, in remarks to EWTN News, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, archbishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo and head of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), declared the following:
“The position taken by Africa [on the declaration] was also the position of so many bishops here in Europe. It’s not just an African exception.”
Following the release of “Fiducia Supplicans” in 2023 by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), Cardinal Ambongo met with the late Pope Francis in Rome to express African bishops’ huge dismay at the declaration.
Pope Francis justified “FIducia Supplicans”, calling the Church in Africa “a separate case.” In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, the late pontiff said: “For [Africans], homosexuality is something ‘ugly’ from a cultural point of view; they do not tolerate it.”
Furthermore, Cardinal Ambongo collaborated with the head of the DDF, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, as well as with Pope Francis to craft a statement stipulating that Vatican permission for same-sex blessings did not apply in the African context.
Notably, a statement from SECAM published on January 11, 2024, cited the Bible’s condemnations of homosexual acts, decrying same-sex unions as “intrinsically corrupt.”
On his end, Pope Francis justified “FIducia Supplicans”, calling the Church in Africa “a separate case.” In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, the late pontiff said: “For [Africans], homosexuality is something ‘ugly’ from a cultural point of view; they do not tolerate it.”
However, in comments quoted by Catholic World Report, Cardinal Ambongo proclaimed that Africa was not alone in opposing homosexuality, stating that homosexuality was fundamentally a “doctrinal, theological problem,” and Church moral teaching on the subject has not flinched.
Indeed, Cardinal Ambongo is spot-on when he clarified that resistance to “Fiducia Supplicans” and the notion of “same-sex blessings” is not merely an African phenomenon steeped in local culture. From a traditional Catholic standpoint, such a portrayal is both unsound and inaccurate.
After all, Holy Mother Church’s teachings on homosexuality do not vary based on regional practices and cultures. Rather, the Catholic Church has consistently taught that the issue of homosexuality is a universal doctrinal matter that contradicts both divine and natural laws. Refusal to acquiesce to homosexual lifestyles is rooted in Holy Scripture, Church magisterial teaching, as well as the natural law.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church #2357 clearly teaches: “‘[H]omosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
It follows that all faithful Catholics (and by extension all peoples) should adhere to the Church’s condemnation of homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered”, regardless of geography or culture.
Considering the disastrous consequences of not following God’s Law (think of Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate), Catholics are called to show humble intellectual and religious adherence to Church teachings and support the Church’s witness to Christ’s truth about marriage and sexuality.
Miles away in Asia, Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen similarly denounced homosexuality, stating in a brief online commentary:
“The most merciful God is so disgusted with same-sex sexual behavior because this crime is too far away from God’s plan for man.His plan is for a man and a woman to unite into one body with one and everlasting love and cooperate with God. New life can be born and grow in the warmth of the family.”
Echoing Cardinals Zen and Ambongo regarding homosexuality, Bishop Joseph Strickalnd from North America posted the following on his Substack page:
“We are drowning in a culture that celebrates impurity, mocks God’s law, and defies the natural order. And yet, we go on as if there will be no reckoning. We brush aside Heaven’s warnings. We hesitate. The sin of Sodom was not merely about lust. It was about pride, rejection of God’s design, and the complete inversion of truth and goodness. It was the final stage of a people who had forgotten God and made idols of their passions. And let us not deceive ourselves: such sin cries out to Heaven still.”
Considering the disastrous consequences of not following God’s Law (think of Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate), Catholics are called to show humble intellectual and religious adherence to Church teachings and support the Church’s witness to Christ’s truth about marriage and sexuality. “Compassion” and “empathy” for people in “irregular situations” should not be pursued at the expense of doctrinal clarity and fidelity.
We as faithful Catholics remain hopeful under Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate that Rome acknowledges that doctrinal clarity and fidelity is expected by faithful Catholics worldwide. Any equivocation regarding Church teachings on faith and morals poses a grave threat to the Church’s authority and unity, and it is highly likely that our new pontiff is aware of this fact. God grant that the pope act soon and decisively to clarify doctrinal ambiguities and confusions.
Mary, Mater Ecclesiae, ora pro nobis.
