When he was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2023, the future Pope Leo XIV, asked about comments he made more than a decade earlier in which he had condemned the “homosexual lifestyle,” said that his views had shifted under Francis and that he agreed the church should be welcoming and open.
A reporter from Catholic News Service asked Cardinal Robert F. Prevost about remarks he made to other bishops in 2012, at the Synod on Evangelization presided over by Pope Benedict XVI, in which he criticized the mass media for its promotion of “abortion, euthanasia and the homosexual lifestyle.”
The reporter asked, “Have you, given Francis’ leadership, experienced any change from 2012 until now?”
Cardinal Prevost appeared to suggest that his views had evolved because of Francis’ influence.
“Given many things that have changed, I would say there’s been a development in the sense of the need for the church to open and to be welcoming,” he said, “and on that level, I think Pope Francis made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress or whatever.”
The cardinal continued, “Doctrine hasn’t changed, and people haven’t said, yet, you know, we’re looking for that kind of change, but we are looking to be more welcoming and more open, and to say all people are welcome in the church.”
Days before his election on Thursday, a profile of Cardinal Prevost in The New York Times revealed that he had lamented that Western media held “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.”
Among those practices, he included the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.” That same article noted that as a bishop in Peru, Cardinal Prevost had opposed a government proposal to teach about gender in school, telling local media, “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist.”
Pope Leo has made no mention of sexuality or gender in the short time that has lapsed since his election. His views on a range of thorny moral questions confronting the church remain unclear. In the pope’s inaugural blessing, he said that he hoped to “build bridges,” a refrain repeated often by Pope Francis, and that he hoped the church would continue along the synodal path, “walking and always seeking peace, charity, closeness, especially to those who are suffering.”
