Newly elected Pope Leo XIV has a documented record on many controversial issues that could indicate where he’ll try to position the Roman Catholic Church in the years to come, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Pope Francis rocked the church in December 2023 when he issued formal permission to Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples, provided it’s not the rite of marriage.
Based on a 2012 address to bishops, Leo would likely bring the church back in line. In that speech, Cardinal Robert Prevost accused the media of fostering “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.” He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children,” according to the Post.
Also, Prevost shot down a government initiative to promote gender ideology in schools while he was bishop of Chiclayo in northwestern Peru.
“The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told media outlets at the time.
On abortion, Prevost posted a photograph from a March For Life event in Chiclayo with the exhortation, “Let’s defend human life at all times!” That includes a push against euthanasia, based on a 2016 repost of a tweet against assisted suicides in Belgium, according to the report.
In regards to capital punishment, Prevost said in a 2015 post, “It’s time to end the death penalty.”
The new Pope is aligned with the previous Pope on climate change. In November, Prevost said it is time to move “from words to action” on the “environmental crisis,” the Post reported. “Dominion over nature” should not become “tyrannical,” Prevost added.
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