Priests in Berlin may confer a blessing on same-sex couples in a ruling of the local Catholic Archbishop.

This comes despite a 2021 Vatican declaration, approved by Pope Francis, that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”

In a recent letter, Archbishop Heiner Koch assures the Berlin archdiocese’s priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers that he will not take disciplinary action against them if they bless couples “who cannot or do not want to marry sacramentally.”

Citing Pope Francis’ 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation, ‘Amoris Laetitia’, he notes that it says that same-sex unions “may not simply be equated with marriage,” and he suggests that Amoris also gives local churches “a great deal of latitude in dealing with people in so-called ‘irregular’ situations.”

Koch argues that Francis’ oft-cited statement about the Eucharist in his 2013 apostolic exhortation ‘Evangelii gaudium’ — that it is “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” — also applies to other sacraments, including marriage, “and yet even more so to a sacramental such as blessing.”

“Every blessing promises God’s grace and help to us people who are and remain weak. Blessing therefore does not have the meaning of ‘legitimizing, endorsing, approving,’” he writes.