Southern African Catholic Bishops — we will implement same-sex blessings
By Russell Pollitt, Daily Maverick.
On 18 December 2023, the Vatican released a declaration — Fiducia Supplicans — that allowed Catholic clergy to bless couples who were not married according to the teachings of the Catholic Church. This included same-sex couples. The document, approved by Pope Francis, triggered a ferocious debate in the global Catholic Church.
Days after the release of the text, many African Catholic bishops reacted by saying that it should be rejected, forgotten and ignored in its totality.
Bishop Paul Kariuki Njiru of Kenya’s Wote diocese said the document “should be rejected in totality, and we faithfully uphold the Gospel teachings and Catholic traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality”.
Bishop Martin Mtumbuka of Karonga Diocese in Malawi told the people of his jurisdiction to “forget and ignore this controversial and apparently blasphemous declaration in its entirety”. The Malawian bishop angrily asked: “Was this letter written to please homosexuals and their promoters? We don’t know. Can the Church depart from its rightful path simply to please certain people who live in immoral unions?”
Mtumbuka speculated that the pope’s advisors did not want to stop him because they feared him. “It’s very sad for me that for the first time in the history of the church, a document released from the Holy See, signed by the Holy Father, is rejected by his fellow bishops and publicly rejected,” he said.
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On 30 January 2024, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) had a press conference at the end of their biannual plenary. At the conference, Cardinal Stephen Brislin, Archbishop of Cape Town and spokesperson for the bishops, announced that the local bishops would be implementing the Vatican document on blessings.
Like the Maghreb region, the Southern African Conference has not taken SECAM’s position.
A bishop, who chose not to be named publicly because of his position on the continent, explained how Besengu had spoken in the name of a continent he had never consulted.
“It is interesting how he blames others for damaging the synodal process but sees no wrong by behaving like a monarch speaking in the name of hundreds of bishops who were never consulted,” he said.
Brislin said the SACBC’s position is “certainly not a criticism of them [other African bishops].” He said, “They [bishops] are fully entitled to do that as they are looking at their own particular situations and their own particular pastoral concerns”.
“Each bishop has to assess the particular needs of his diocese and the particular impact this would have. And we in South Africa felt that, obviously, it is up to each local bishop, but that we would implement the document and its recommendations with blessings, prudently,” the cardinal said.
The president of the Bishop’s conference, Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha, was also present. He affirmed Catholic Church teaching, saying that the Catholic Church still holds to the fact that “same-sex unions, according to the teaching of the church, are not in accordance with the will of God”.
Brislin agreed, stating: “The declaration very clearly reaffirms the doctrine of the Catholic church about marriage, a lifelong commitment between a man and woman”.
He went on to say: “It is really a document that is talking about a pastoral practice, for example, for people who are in other irregular situations — like people who are divorced and remarried and haven’t managed to have an annulment and young people perhaps who are living together without any marriage or commitment — are not excluded from the pastoral care of the Church.
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