Pope Francis delivers his Christmas Urbi et Orbi blessing in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican on December 25, 2022. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)
Eko Hot Blog reports that the Catholic Bishops of the Lagos Ecclesiastical Province, comprising Lagos Archdiocese, Ijebu Ode, and Abeokuta Dioceses, have declared their stance against blessing same-sex marriages, contradicting Pope Francis’s earlier permissiveness.
The bishops conveyed their position in a communiqué issued after their January 26 plenary meeting in Lagos, emphasizing their alignment with the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar on the issue.
In the communiqué signed by Most Rev Alfred Martins and Most Rev Francis Adesina, the chairman and secretary of the bishops respectively, they firmly stated, “No to the blessing of same-sex unions.”
The bishops affirmed the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage as the union of a man and a woman in a stable, exclusive relationship open to bearing children.
Flag of Nigeria up close.
They urged the faithful to be guided by the Church’s teachings on human sexuality.
“This is a reaffirmation of our unwavering commitment to upholding the sanctity of marriage as ordained by God,” Archbishop Alfred Martins remarked.
This position stands in apparent contradiction to Pope Francis’s earlier stance, where he had hinted at the possibility of the Catholic Church blessing same-sex unions, deviating from the Vatican’s 2021 decree that God “cannot bless sin” in the form of gay marriages.
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