Cardinal says that Rome must now decide on whether homosexual couples can receive blessings

Woelki initially waits for the blessing of homosexual couples

Rome should decide the matter

According to Cologne Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki, the Vatican must decide whether homosexual couples should be blessed. When voting on this at the synodal assembly, Woelki abstained from voting.

"Cardinal Woelki knows about the deep desire of same-sex couples for a church blessing, which the archbishop can empathize with," the archdiocese explained to the "Kölnische Rundschau" on Tuesday.

He assumes that the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing, will endeavor to clarify the issue in Rome and is "waiting for the opinion of the Holy See".

Woelki had abstained from voting

The plenary assembly of the Catholic reform project Synodal Path decided last week at its final session that there could be official Catholic blessing celebrations for same-sex couples and remarried divorced people in Germany in the future. Woelki had abstained from voting on this.

Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said on Monday evening at a book launch in Rome that the question of blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples could not be answered by a local church alone. Rather, what is needed is a dialogue at the level of the world church.

As early as March 2021, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had announced in writing that the Catholic Church had no authority to bless marriages between persons of the same sex. It is not permissible to bless relationships or even stable partnerships that involve sexual practice outside of marriage.

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Cardinal Woelki seems to have been all over the place on this issue, at one point equating homosexual and heterosexual relations and, at another point, calling homosexual relations violations of natural law.  He epitomises the two minds of the modern church, one modernist and the other Catholic.  Now is a time of choosing.