In an interview with the Uruguayan newspaper El País published on Dec. 24, Sturla noted: “It’s clear that a priest blesses all persons. I was just at a prison and I blessed everyone who was there. If people come to ask me for my blessing, I always give it. I remember when the trans law was being discussed, that we were in a procession at St. Ignatius Parish and some trans persons came to ask me for my blessing and I gave them a blessing.”
The Vatican 2021 ‘responsum’
“Another thing,” he continued, “is to bless a homosexual couple. There it is no longer the blessing of the persons, but of the couple, and the entire tradition of the Church, even a document from two years ago, says that it’s not possible to do this.”
The archbishop of Montevideo was referring to the “responsum” or official response of March 2021, of the then Congregation — now Dicastery — for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed (until July 1 of this year) by Spanish Jesuit Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria, which stated that the Church cannot bless homosexual couples.
To the proposed question “Does the Church have the power to impart a blessing upon unions of persons of the same sex?” the response was “negative.”
“It is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,” the document explained.