Those who criminalize homosexuality are “wrong”, Pope Francis said in a letter published on Friday, seeking to clarify his previous comments about homosexual acts as “sins”.
In an interview published on Wednesday, the Pope said homosexuality was “not a crime… but a sin”.
In a letter published on Saturday, written for Jesuit priests, Francis said he wanted in the interview “to clarify that (homosexuality) is not a crime, to emphasize that criminalization is not good and unjust”.
“When I say it’s a sin, I’m only referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” he wrote.
The Pope was responding to a letter from US priest James Martin, who asked for clarity on comments the Pope made during an interview with the Associated Press news agency.
The issue of homosexuality has caused a major rift in the Catholic Church between modernists and conservatives.
Francis, 86, has courted controversy since his appointment as pope in 2013 with his relatively liberal stance on sexual orientation.
Francis’ letter, written in Spanish, was translated into English and published by the website Outreach, a Catholic LGBTQ resource of which Martin is the editor.
“I will tell anyone who wants to criminalize homosexuality that they are wrong,” the Pope wrote.
In an AP interview, Francis said homosexuality was “not a crime”.
“It’s not a crime… it’s a sin,” he said, adding: “It’s also a sin not to have charity with one another.”
In his letter to Martin, Francis said his comments on “sin” reflected the overall moral teaching of the Catholic Church.
“When I say it’s a sin, I’m only referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” he wrote.
“Of course, one must also consider circumstances, which can reduce or eliminate errors.”
“As you can see, I repeated something in public. I should have said, ‘It’s a sin, like having sex outside of marriage.'”
The Pope’s comments on homosexuality come ahead of a trip next week to Africa, where the criminalization of homosexuality is common.
Francis plans to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan during his six-day visit to the continent.
Although Francis has often accepted gay people and instructed that they should be given a benevolent reception in the Church, he remains firmly in line with Catholic teaching on marriage.
That defines the union between a man and a woman to procreate.
In a previous letter to Martin in June 2021, Francis thanked the priest for his work to reach out to LGBTQ people, emphasized the inclusive nature of Catholicism and wrote that God “loves each of his children”.
Last month, the Vatican reaffirmed that homosexuality is a “sin” and said gays cannot receive the sacrament of marriage.