The new pope will continue to bless same-sex couples, according to the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office.

Asked by a journalist if Pope Leo XIV would revoke the blessings put in place by the late Pope Francis, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández reportedly replied, “I really don’t think so. The declaration will remain.”

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In 2023, Pope Francis approved the blessing of same-sex unions, releasing a declaration through the Vatican’s Office of the Doctrine of the Faith that allowed priests to do so for the first time.

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The declaration did not amend “the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,” Fernández said at the time, because there is no liturgical rite that could be confused with the marriage sacrament. The Church still maintains that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and the document explains the form of the blessing “should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.”

“Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God,” Fernández wrote at the time. “The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence, mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live.”

While Fernández indicated Pope Leo would continue these blessings, the new head of the Catholic Church has also made it clear he believes in core Catholic teaching opposing same-sex marriage.

In a private meeting with the Vatican diplomatic corps earlier this year, he said that governments around the world had the responsibility to build peaceful societies, “above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman.”

In a video presentation that surfaced following his election by the conclave, Leo (then-Bishop Robert Prevost) bemoaned the “homosexual lifestyle” at a gathering of the world Synod of Bishops in 2012.

“Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” Prevost said, calling out the “homosexual lifestyle” specifically.

He pointed to “how alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children are so benignly and sympathetically portrayed in television programs and cinema today.”

“We pray that in the 13 years that have passed, 12 of which were under the papacy of Pope Francis, that his heart and mind have developed more progressively on LGBTQ+ issues,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic LGBTQ+ ministry, after his election had been announced, “and we will take a wait-and-see attitude to see if that has happened.”

Asked by the Catholic News Service in 2023 if his views had changed, Prevost acknowledged the pope’s call for a more inclusive church and said Francis “made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress, or whatever.”

But, he added, doctrine had not changed.

“And people haven’t said yet we’re looking for that kind of change,” Prevost said. “But we are looking to be more welcoming and more open and to say all people are welcome in the church.”

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