Pope Francis Approves Gay Marriages With Silence for Germany and Belgium

From The National Catholic Reporter:

“At the final meeting, held March 9-11, he took to the podium and told the audience a very interesting story. Everything the Germans were fighting for, he said, he and his brothers in Flanders already had started to put in motion — with very little controversy or news headlines. Flanders has been allowing blessings for same-sex couples since 2022, and not even the pope or the Vatican has intervened, though they were informed, Bonny said.

Bonny’s story surely changed some minds at the synodal assembly and helped to garner the needed majorities. He said the Flemish bishops went to the Vatican last autumn for their scheduled ad limina visit and presented the pope with their idea.

“Is that your unanimous wish?” Bonny said Francis asked. It was. The pope neither condoned nor vetoed their idea, Bonny said, so they began to implement same-sex blessings in Flanders basically straightaway.

Just days before the Flemish bishops met with the pope, the German bishops’ conference also had their ad limina consultations with the Roman curia. Even though same-sex blessings were not reported as a topic of the meetings, the atmosphere must have been very frosty.

According to texts later released by the Vatican, several cardinals essentially called for the suspension of the Synodal Path. The German bishops declined. Several of them later spoke of being talked to like “little schoolboys,” which they were not willing to accept.

Bonny, the Belgian bishop, mentioned this treatment during the assembly in Frankfurt. “Perhaps the Vatican officials were a bit tired after the Germans,” he joked, implying this may be a reason for the smaller resistance to the Flemish reform ideas.

Of course, the bishops’ conferences in Germany and Flanders are very different. The German conference has almost 70 members; the one in Flanders has eight. The Germans also are known to take a more thorough, and often more confrontational, approach than other countries.

The German Synodal Path has been discussing the idea of same-sex blessings publicly for more than three years. In this time, they worked out a profound theological memorandum to go with their proposal. The Flemish bishops apparently didn’t make such a big deal of it. They came to an agreement amongst themselves, went to Rome and started informal talks with the curia. And only then did they present Francis with their idea and went public.”