Fiducia Supplicans “a pastoral document”: Portuguese-born Catholic Bishop in Cape Verde

“The Church belongs to all and what the Pope and the Dicastery wanted is that these brothers and sisters of ours perhaps don't feel excluded or stigmatized,” he said, adding that the Church does approve of what those in irregular unions and situations do. 

He emphasized, “There can't be any blessings like that in the church; there can't be anything that gives the impression that there's a marriage, because marriage for the Church continues to be between a man and a woman, there's no other way; the Church's doctrine hasn't changed at all. This document doesn't change anything as far as the essentials are concerned.”

The 2016 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on love in the family, Amoris Laetitia, the Bishop said, “already left this responsibility of accompanying these more difficult cases very much to the pastors; but the main objective is that everyone is a child of God.”

The 59-year-old Catholic Bishop, who has been at the helm of Mindelo Diocese since his Episcopal Ordinary in April 2011, continued, “When we're blessing, we're no longer asking people: Do you deserve it? Do you not deserve it? Are you holy? Are you not holy?”

“For people to get off the wrong path, to get out of the sin they're in, they need blessings; they need God; they need God's light,” the member of the Clergy of Lisbon in Portugal further said, adding, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we meet in the Gospel, is extremely merciful; He welcomed sinners and blessed everyone.”

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He posed, “Imagine, if we bless the fields, bless the animals, why shouldn't we bless people?”

FS is “not about blessing the situation; it's not about proving what they do wrong, it's about being you as the human creature you are; and God also wants to help you move towards holiness,” Bishop dos Santos said on January 4.

João Vissesse is an Angolan Journalist with a passion and rich experience in Catholic Church Communication and Media Apostolate.