The papal thumbs up appeared midway through the movie that delves into matters the Pope cares about greatest.
Consequently, matters for Pope include the environment, poverty, immigration, racial, and earnings inequality. Lastly, the list also has the people most influenced by prejudice like the LGBTQ+ community.
The endorsement by Pope Francis
Pope Francis supported same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while talking for the feature-length documentary Francesco. Consequently, the docu premiered this recent Wednesday at the Rome Film Festival to everyone’s delight.
The papal thumbs-up arrived halfway through the film that probes into problems Francis heeds about most. These issues include the climate, hunger, migration, racial and income disparity, and the people most influenced by unfairness.
“Homosexual personalities have the freedom to be in a family. They are offspring of God,” Francis said in one of his sit-down discussions for the movie. “What we have to spawn is civil union legislation. Consequently, that way, they are judicially incorporated.”
The beliefs of the Pope
While working as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis approved civil unions for gay couples to choose same-sex marriages. However, he had never reached out publicly in support of civil unions as the pope.
The Jesuit minister who has remained at the vanguard in building bridges with gays in the church is the Rev. James Martin. The latter also appreciated the pope’s comments as a vital step forward in the church’s backing for LGBT people. “The Pope’s speaking emphatically about civil unions also conveys a strong word to places where the church has rejected such laws,” Martin said in his account.
About the documentary
One of the main actors in the documentary is Juan Carlos Cruz. Consequently, he is the Chilean relict of clergy sexual abuse whom Francis originally discredited during a 2018 visit toward Chile. Cruz, who is gay, stated that during his first encounters with the pope in May 2018, Francis reassured him that God produced Cruz gay. Cruz tells his personal story in fragments throughout the film, chronicling both Francis’ development on understanding sexual abuse and documenting the pope’s beliefs on the gay community.
Director Evgeny Afineevsky had unprecedented access to cardinals, the Vatican station archives, and the pope too. He said he bartered his way through grit and eloquence of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he took to the pope via some well-connected Argentines present in Rome.
Conclusively, this event only leads to shutting the naysayers who have used religious practices as their platform of protest. Likely, in a world where protests are happening at the dawn of each day, the people only hope that they are, ultimately, for good.
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