QUOTE TO NOTE: Blessing Same-Gender Couples ‘Changes Everything’ Says Cardinal

Earlier this year, a French publisher issued a book entitled Homos et cathos: L’Eglise à l’épreuve du réel (Gays and Catholics: The Church Confronts Reality), edited by Claire Bévierre and Florence Euverte. Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the archbishop of Algiers, wrote the preface. The publisher, Desclée De Brouwer, describes the book this way:

“This book gives a voice to gay Christians and to parents who refuse to resign themselves to silence or marginalization. Their testimonies—at once intimate and courageous—reveal a Church caught in tension: between conditional acceptance and the desire for recognition, between doctrine and reality. How can we break the deadlock and recognize the dignity of each person—not *despite* who they are, but *as* they are?

“Structured around several major challenges—from coming out to fruitfulness, as well as affective and sexual ethics—the book brings personal stories into dialogue with the insights of experts, biblical scholars, and theologians. Together, they open up new theological and pastoral paths. Along the way, they sketch the outlines of a Church at peace—one that, in order to proclaim the Good News in today’s world, finds enrichment in the diversity of its children!”

Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco

The Outreach website posted an English translation of Cardinal Vesco’s preface, which you can read in entirety here.  I’d like to highlight the following short section, which refers to Fiducia Supplicans, the 2023 Vatican document which allowed church ministers to bless people in same-gender relationships:

“For my part, I do not believe that the intention of this text [Fiducia Supplicans] is to permit only a ‘hush-hush’ blessing of same-sex couples, as has sometimes been understood. What, in my view, constitutes the extreme pastoral—and ultimately doctrinal—value of this text is the reminder that God blesses each of his creatures, whatever their state of life.

“What would be the opposite of blessing for God? Cursing? Or being neutral, without opinion? It would be madness to think so, just as it would be madness to think so of parents toward their children! God’s heart is infinitely greater than we can ever imagine. Through this text, the Church authorizes its ministers to impart this blessing, not merely in their own name but in the name of the Church, and that changes everything.

“How good it is that homosexual people, whatever their state of life, should hear this blessing just as you and I do.”

This quotation is a reminder that blessings don’t come from the church: they come from God.  The church performs the blessing, but the grace of the blessing comes from God.  Cardinal Vesco notes that the church’s role in administering blessings “changes everything,” and notes how positive it is for gay and lesbian couples to receive this practice of inclusion.

However, I think it is important to remember that part of the “everything” that “changes” is not just the couple, but the Church itself.  Fiducia Supplicans is a major step for LGBTQ+ people, but it is perhaps a bigger step for the church, on its pilgrim journey to learn how to love all people as God does.

––Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, July 28, 2026