Transgender people can be baptised into the Catholic Church and be godparents and witnesses at weddings, Pope Francis has said, putting himself on a collision course with US bishops.
The Vatican decreed that a transgender person could be baptised as long as there was “no risk of causing a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful”.
The pontiff, 86, has tried to make the Church more welcoming to LGBT people without changing religious teachings, including one saying that same-sex attraction is not sinful but same-sex acts are.
“Even if we are sinners, He draws near to help us. The Lord loves us as we are, this is God’s crazy love,” he told a transgender person in July.
A same-sex couple could have an adopted child or one obtained through a surrogate mother baptised if there was “a well-founded hope that it would be educated in the Catholic religion”, the Vatican said.
Transgender people could be godparents at a baptism as well as a witness at a Church wedding, at the discretion of the local priest, who should exercise “pastoral prudence” in his decision.
The decree contradicts a 2015 Vatican ruling, which barred a transgender man in Spain from becoming a godparent.
Asked if a person in a same-sex relationship could be a godparent, the Vatican said that person had to “lead a life that conforms to the faith”.
The doctrinal office said a person in a same-sex relationship could also be a witness at a Catholic wedding, citing current Church legislation which contained no prohibition against it.
Rejected concept of gender transition
The decree could prove controversial in the United States, where the national conference of Catholic bishops has rejected the concept of gender transition.
The bishops issued guidelines to stop Catholic hospitals from providing gender-affirming care.
Some US dioceses have policies banning the use of pronouns matching transgender identities at Catholic institutions and transgender teachers have been fired from Catholic schools.
Pope Francis has previously said it was an “honour” to be attacked by US Conservatives. In August, he attacked the “backwardness” of some “reactionary” US Catholics.
He accused them of replacing faith with ideology in August and said doctrine was allowed to change over time.
Bishop Jose Negri of Santo Amaro in Brazil had sent the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith six questions in July regarding LGBT people and their participation in baptism and matrimony.
The Pope approved the answers on Oct 31, which were published online on Wednesday.
“This is an important step forward in the Church seeing transgender people not only as people (in a Church where some say they don’t really exist) but as Catholics,” said Father James Martin, a prominent Jesuit priest and supporter of LGBT rights in the Church.
“It is a major step for trans inclusion … it is big and good news,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of Maryland-based New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBT inclusion.
Most Catholics are baptised as children so the practical impact of the decree will be limited because of the smaller transgender community and smaller numbers of baptism later in life.
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