The Church has no power to bless same-sex unions, according to a note published yesterday by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) with the assent of Pope Francis.

The CDF said a blessing is a sacramental and it can only be given for things “ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord”.

“For this reason, 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”. This applies also to stable heterosexual unions which are not valid marriages, including merely civil unions contracted by Catholics after a divorce.

The note adds that the Church recalls that God Himself “never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world, because for Him ‘we are more important to God than all of the sins that we can commit’.

“But he does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him. He in fact ‘takes us as we are, but never leaves us as we are’”.