Washington D.C., 29 December, 2023 / 9:20 pm (ACI Africa).
With some African bishops expressing concerns about the Vatican’s new same-sex blessing declaration, one prominent black Pentecostal leader is voicing his “solidarity” with African Catholics and urging Pope Francis to withdraw the guidelines.
The Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III, who is the founder and director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies and a minister for the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, wrote an open letter to Pope Francis to “condemn your decision to bless homosexual [couples]” and say that “your black Pentecostal brothers in the United States [stand] in solidarity with our Catholic brothers in Africa and the diaspora.”
“The message conveyed by the authorization of the blessing of couples whose sinful conduct is central to their relationship is easily interpreted in ways that contradict the biblical principle of the complementarity of male and female,” Rivers said in the letter.
“The decision is already almost universally being interpreted as approving the blessing of sexual sin; indeed, it invites the inference that it was meant to be interpreted thus,” he wrote.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans on Dec. 18, which permitted “spontaneous” nonliturgical blessings of “same-sex couples.” The declaration reaffirmed the Church’s teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and maintained the prohibition on any liturgical or semi-liturgical ceremonies for such couples.
