The pope’s comments on Wednesday came as abortion has once again been at the forefront of politics in both the United States and Mexico.
This month, the nation’s most restrictive abortion law went into effect in Texas and the Biden administration has gone to court to try to block it. And the Supreme Court is expected to pass a Mississippi abortion law in a case that anti-abortion advocates hope will overturn the abortion rights precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973 and subsequent rulings. .
The Supreme Court of Mexico last week handed down a ruling that decriminalized abortion in the country.
Francis was not asked or addressed the legal actions of the United States or Mexico.
He spoke frankly about other issues, though he included the rise of anti-Semitism (“it’s resurfacing, it’s fashionable, it’s an ugly, ugly thing”) and his brief meeting on Sunday with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. , noting that the Hungarian leader’s anti-immigrant policies had not appeared in his interaction.
Asked about this month’s European Parliament resolution calling on member states to recognize same-sex marriage in European countries where such unions are possible, Francis reiterated that marriage was a sacrament and that there were civil laws to “help the situations of many people who have a different sexual orientation. “
The pope, who has taken a particularly tolerant stance on gays compared to his predecessors, spoke of civil unions as a way to meet the needs of the people. But he said “marriage is marriage” between “a man and a woman.” People of different sexual orientations can participate in church life, he said, “but please don’t make the church deny its truth.”
Francis also reiterated his belief that coronavirus vaccines were essential after being asked about the division of Christians in Slovakia by inoculation. He made an apparent reference to an American cardinal, Raymond Burke, who spread the vaccine misinformation and then received treatment for Covid-19 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.