During the pope's recent three-city trip to the United States, Francis mainly avoided talking about controversies over LGBT rights. He avoided using words like "gay," which he has used in the past, or "homosexuality," which the previous pope, Benedict XVI, preferred.
Rather than speaking directly on legalized gay marriage in the Unites States, the pope talked about "unprecedented changes...[having] social, culture and, unfortunately, now juridical effects on family bonds," reported the Huffington Post.
This has caused "widespread confusion" among catholics over the possibility of the Catholic Church allowing homosexual unions have incited 800,000 catholics to sign a petition asking the pope for "a clarifying word," reported the Christian Post.
Many people perceive the pope as progressive for his comment on gay priests, citing things such as his famous remark, "who am I to judge?" as proof of his "diverted" thinking.
The pope's comment that the Catholic Church is "obsessed" with speaking against gay marriage, birth control and abortion, while criticizing the U.S. judicial legalization of same-sex marriage as a change that "affects all of us, believers and non-believers alike," confused many people about his stance on the subject, reported Fox News.
As the October Vatican Synod on Marriage and the Family approaches, more than half-a-million Catholics signed the petition to show the pope that their concern over his "theological tendencies in the Church today," reported the Christian Post. The petition wants Francis to reaffirm the Church teachings against allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion, and against homosexual unions.
Catholic priests published "a flurry of books advocating Church doctrine on marriage and family," reported the Christian Post. African Bishops released letters demanding "western powers stop pushing their filthy campaigns that promote a civilization of death on our continent," according to Breitbart News.
African Bishops fear the destruction of marriage and the family and the reduction of the African people from western powers. This was heartened by Francis's statement that secular marriage is no longer similar to the Christian understanding of holy matrimony, and thereby distancing the Catholic Church from the western legalization of same-sex marriage.
The fact that nearly 1 million people signed the petition for Pope Francis to clarify the church's teachings on family and marriage shows that "a substantial number of believers are very worried about certain theological tendencies present in the Church today," stated Tommaso Scandroglio, a professor of Ethics at the European University of Rome, Breibart News reported.
