Elton John has condemned the Pope for ruling that same-sex unions cannot be blessed because they are sinful, accusing the Vatican of hypocrisy after it invested in the biopic Rocketman which was co-produced by his husband David Furnish.
‘How can the Vatican refuse to bless gay marriages,’ asked the 73-year-old singer, ‘yet happily make a profit from investing millions in Rocketman – a film which celebrates my finding happiness from my marriage to David?’.
Italian media reported in 2019 that around a million euros (£860,000) of Vatican funds had gone towards the film via a Maltese investment group. The Hollywood production brought in $185million (£140million) at the box office.
But the Vatican’s ruling on Monday, approved by Pope Francis, means Catholic clergy are prevented from blessing same-sex unions such as Elton’s marriage to David Furnish in 2014.
The decision has angered gay worshippers, and some rebel priests are even planning to offer unauthorised blessings in defiance of the Vatican’s verdict.
Elton John and his husband David Furnish at the premiere of the Rocketman biopic in 2019 – a movie which the 73-year-old singer says the Vatican was willing to profit from
Elton John condemned the Pope for ruling that same-sex unions cannot be blessed because they are sinful, accusing the Vatican of hypocrisy
Pope Francis signed off a two-page ruling by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office which was published on Monday and said that Catholic clergy cannot bless same sex-unions
The Rocketman film previously led to political controversy in 2019 when Elton slammed Russia for its reported censorship of gay sex scenes.
The singer called it a ‘sad reflection of the divided world we still live in and how it can still be so cruelly unaccepting of the love between two people’.
The Vatican link to the film later came under scrutiny amid an investigation into deals made by the powerful Secretariat of State.
The Holy See has never commented on its connection to Rocketman or Elton John, who previously praised the Pope in 2014 for his compassion towards gay people.
But Francis is now coming under pressure from gay Catholics and rights groups who say its verdict on same-sex unions is out of step with the modern world.
Francis signed off the two-page ruling which called on Catholic clergy to treat gay people with ‘respect and sensitivity’ but said that blessing their unions would ‘encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised’ as God’s will.
Louisa Wall, a New Zealand lawmaker who helped legalise gay marriage in the country in 2013, said the ruling seemed incongruent with Francis’s support for civil unions.
‘I join many gay Catholics who are disheartened by this announcement and I hope their church leaders continue to advocate for these blessings,’ Wall said.
‘The Catholic Church could role-model an ability to evolve with their membership.’
In Austria, a group called the Parish Priests Initiative said it was ‘deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that seeks to prohibit the blessing of same-sex couples’.
‘This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to have overcome with Pope Francis,’ it said, adding that it would defy the ruling by continuing to offer blessings.
The group led by Father Helmut Schueller has also said it will break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.
The Vatican in 2012 cracked down on Schueller, stripping him of the right to use the title monsignor and saying he was also no longer a ‘Chaplain of His Holiness’.
Taron Egerton as Elton John in a scene from Rocketman, which reportedly benefited from around one million euros of Vatican money
The verdict was published on Monday by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by Pope Francis
Rodney Croome, a leading advocate for marriage equality when same-sex marriage became legal in Australia, accused the Vatican of being out of step.
Gay marriage was endorsed by 62 per cent of voters who responded to an Australian postal ballot in 2017.
‘The Vatican is out of step, not only with public opinion in Australia, but with the majority of Catholics who voted Yes for marriage equality in 2017,’ said Croome.
‘If I could address the Pope directly, I’d say that sin lies not with same-sex relationships, but with those who invoke God to push LGBTIQ people to the margins of society,’ added Croome, who is gay.
Benjamin Oh, a member of Australian Catholics for Equality, said the church was willing to bless ‘animals, cars and even weapons’ but not his 16-year relationship.
‘For many Catholic Christians, this statement flies in the face of Jesus’ teaching to love,’ he said, saying there was ‘still a toxic culture’ within the church.
‘This statement will no doubt be weaponised by those who want to inflict more pain, discrimination and suffering on LGBTI folks both in our church and in civil society, especially in places and communities that discriminate, marginalize, harm, abuse and even kill LGBTI persons,’ Oh said.
In the Philippines, Asia’s largest Catholic nation, gay rights leader Danton Remoto reacted with exasperation to the Vatican edict.
‘I keep on telling LGBTQIs to just have their civil unions done,’ Remoto said. ‘We do not need any stress anymore from this church.’
Remoto said it was better to bring the struggle for gay rights in the country before local governments, which have passed more than 20 anti-discrimination ordinances.
‘Why fight an ancient institution?’ Remoto asked.
Francis last year caused controversy among Catholics by giving his backing to civil unions, but has never come out in favour of religious unions.
How previous Popes have approached same-sex civil unions
John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (October 1978 to April 2005)
Pope John Paul II spoke out repeatedly against same-sex marriage during his tenure, calling it an attack on the fabric of society.
He approved the 2003 document which said Catholic lawmakers had a ‘moral duty’ to vote against the legal recognition of same-sex unions.
‘Attacks on marriage and the family, from an ideological and legal aspect, are becoming stronger and more radical every day,’ he said in 2004.
‘Anyone who destroys this fundamental fabric causes a profound injury to society and provokes often irreparable damage.’
He also criticised a gay pride parade through Rome in 2000 as an ‘offence to Christian values’ and reaffirmed that the Church considered homosexuality ‘objectively disordered’.
Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI (April 2005 to February 2013)
Benedict made the battle against secularism a central part of his papacy and called gay marriage a threat to ‘human dignity and the future of humanity itself’.
‘A century ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to talk about homosexual marriage,’ Benedict once said in an interview.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict had led the Vatican’s orthodoxy office when it issued the 2003 paper condemning same-sex unions.
As Pope, in a 2007 speech in Rome, he criticised efforts to give same-sex unions ‘inappropriate legal recognition’, saying they destabilised the ‘legitimate family’.
On another occasion, Benedict said humanity needed to ‘listen to the language of creation’ to understand the intended roles of man and woman.
Monday’s decree reiterated the Church’s position that marriage between man and a woman is part of God’s plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life.
It acknowledged that the wish to bless same-sex unions is ‘not infrequently motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons’.
But since their unions are not intended as part of God’s plan, they cannot validly be blessed by the church, the document said.
‘The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,’ the Vatican’s ruling said.
God ‘does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,’ it said.
The document argued that the ruling is ‘not intended to be a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite and of the very nature of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them’.
The Vatican said Francis was ‘informed and gave his assent’ to the ruling, which gave a verdict of ‘negative’ to the question of whether such unions could be blessed.
Francis has always opposed gay marriage, but his 2019 comments that ‘what we have to create is a civil union law’ caused a sensation in the Catholic world.
The remarks emerged last year in a documentary in which he also said: ‘Homosexual people have the right to be in a family… they are children of God’.
The Vatican played down Francis’s remarks at the time, saying they were taken out of context and referred to his position while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
But it did not confirm or deny reports that it had ordered the sensitive remarks to be cut from the Mexican TV interview in which they were initially made in 2019.
Francis’s words were hailed by admirers at the time as a ‘major step forward in the church’s support for LGBT people’.
However, there was also a chorus of anger from conservative Catholics who said they ‘clearly contradict what has been the long-standing teaching of the church’.
Catholic teaching holds that gay people should be treated with respect but that homosexual acts are ‘intrinsically disordered’.
A 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrine office – bearing the stamp of Francis’s two immediate predecessors – said legal approval would mean the ‘approval of deviant behaviour’.
‘The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,’ it said.
Francis has frequently said that gay people should be accepted in their parishes and urged parents not to reject their children.
On his first foreign trip as pope, to Brazil in 2013, he said of gay people trying to live a Christian life: ‘Who am I to judge?’.
Since then, he has ministered to gay people and transgender prostitutes, and welcomed people in same-sex partnerships into his inner circle.
In 2014, the Vatican denied reports that Francis had endorsed civil unions, and he took a more conservative tone in a book called On Heaven And Earth.
‘Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity,’ he said in criticism of adoption by gay couples.
He added that laws which equated same-sex relationships to marriages would be ‘an anthropological regression’.
Francis has always voiced opposition to gay marriage, saying that marriage should only be between a man and woman.
‘Marriage is a historic word,’ he told French sociologist Dominique Wolton in a 2017 book of interviews. ‘Always among human beings, and not only in the Church, it has been between a man and a woman. You can’t just change that like that.’