Unity at whose cost? On Pope Leo's remarks about same-sex blessing. Angela Han

The Church's "unity" is being preserved at the expense of LGBTQIA+ people who were never fully included in the first place. A Church that holds together by marginalising people hasn't achieved true unity; it has simply avoided conflict among those already included.

The pope is right that the Church and some Christians fixate too narrowly on sexual morality. But invoking unity as a reason to delay inclusion simply shifts the question: whose unity, and at whose expense?

When Pope Leo XIV stepped onto a plane on his way back from Africa recently and fielded questions from journalists, I found myself doing something I have grown familiar with over years of ministry: holding a reaction that is both appreciative and quietly bereft.

Asked about Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s decision to allow formalised blessings of same-sex couples in the Archdiocese of Munich, Leo reframed the question entirely. “The unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters,” he said. “We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”

He is not wrong. As someone who has spent years working alongside LGBTQIA+ Catholics and Christians – some of whom arrive at our doors carrying decades of shame deposited by precisely this kind of obsessive ecclesial scrutiny – I know how much damage the Church’s disproportionate focus on sexual morality has caused. The pope’s broadening of the moral frame is welcome. However, since Leo named the standard, it is fair to hold him to it – because for many LGBTIQA+ people, recognition and equality by the communities that raised them is the justice question. They are not two separate conversations.

Then Leo said this: to go beyond what his predecessor permitted on blessings “can cause more disunity than unity.” I understand the geopolitical reality he is navigating. The Catholic Church is a genuinely global institution, and the unity of that communion
is not a trivial pastoral concern. The tensions between a German archdiocese and bishops across conservative dioceses including ones in Australia and our neighbouring countries are real. I do not think Leo makes this argument lightly or cynically.

But unity is not the same as undividedness. A Church that holds together by leaving people on its margins has not achieved unity – it has achieved the absence of conflict amongst those who are already included. The LGBTQIA+ Catholics I know, here in Perth
and through community and advocacy work that connects me to people from countries where same-sex acts are criminalised, are not outside the Church’s unity because they chose to leave. They are outside it because the terms of belonging were never fully
extended to them. Unity that requires exclusion isn’t something worth preserving. It’s something worth changing.

On the same flight, Leo spoke movingly about migrants, insisting they must be treated “in a humanitarian way” and not worse than “house pets, animals, et cetera.” He also described the Vatican’s behind-the-scenes work: promoting justice, humanitarian causes, and “finding ways for political prisoners to be freed.” It is a reassuring account of how the Church operates – quietly, in the service of the vulnerable. But I want to take that phrase seriously.  In several of the countries Leo just visited, same-sex acts are
criminalised. 

By Leo’s own definition, LGBTQIA+ Africans are amongst the political prisoners that the Church’s quiet diplomacy could set free. Migrants from any country can also identify as
LGBTIQA+. These are not mutually exclusive identities. The Church’s behind-the-scenes advocacy is real and valuable, but on this matter, the absence of advocacy is part of the problem – no matter how divisive it may seem.

The Book of Blessings contains standard rites for blessing cars and pets. These are ordinary acts of accompaniment which call down God’s grace into daily life. When LGBTQIA+ Catholics ask for the same recognition of their relationships, they are told it
risks tearing the institution apart. 

Even where informal blessings are permitted, the guidance is deliberately limited. There is no shared rite – only the insistence that such blessings remain simple, spontaneous, and stripped of any form that might resemble recognition. 

That absence is not incidental. It ensures that what is allowed in theory remains hesitant, inconsistent, and largely invisible in practice. It is precisely this gap that bishops like Marx are attempting to address – offering priests guidance on how to speak and pray in these moments – yet it is this very move toward clarity and consistency that is now being treated as a threat to unity. However, a blessing is not a marriage. It carries no legal weight, and it makes no sacramental claim that the Church has not already approved. Where local churches have discerned through synodal process that there is pastoral room to offer this accompaniment, that is the process working as intended.

A non-Catholic friend asked me about a gay couple that she knows who are faithful Catholics that serve their parish. My friend wondered whether their priest could marry them. Not just for the couple themselves, but so that their family and friends could
stand alongside them and witness it. 

The answer, of course, is no. Informal blessings may be permitted in some places, but not in a way that can be publicly recognised, not in a way that allows the people who love them to stand alongside them and see their commitment named and held by the Church. Even if pastoral care is intended, something essential is withheld not only from the couple – but everyone that longs to celebrate them. 

That disproportion deserves to be named. That is a Church deciding, again, whose lives are the acceptable cost of ‘keeping the peace’ despite insisting that people be treated in a “humanitarian way” and “better than house pets.”

If the Church is genuinely worried about schism, then it must consider the people leaving quietly, one by one, because they have concluded there is no place for them or the people that they love. This too is a form of fracture – a kind of spiritual homelessness, because church should feel like a spiritual home. 

The Church encourages LGBTIQA+ people to dialogue with their local Bishops. The recent gathering of US bishops with LGBTIQA+ Catholics, convened through New Ways Ministry, showed that genuine encounter across difference can change people. But firstly, it requires Bishops to sit face-to-face with them, listen, and most importantly – to act. Dialogue that never moves is not dialogue. It is merely delay under a more acceptable name. 

These meetings are only possible where people are legally, socially, and culturally free to be themselves. That is why LGBTQIA+ inclusion is so often dismissed as a ‘Western preoccupation.’ But my friends in Asian countries – people who are not part of any LGBTQIA+ Christian movement, who cannot safely be out, who have no access to any formal blessing – tell me something I keep returning to. They say that knowing these blessings exist somewhere gives them hope. That somewhere, for someone like them, the Church has made room. They are not asking for what Munich has. They are asking only to know that it is possible.

That is the witness function of these moments that Leo’s framing misses. A blessing offered in Germany is not only a pastoral act for the couple in the room. It is a signal to the whole communion that a different imagination is possible – and that signal travels. The Church does not merely respond to culture. As one of the world's most influential religious institutions, it shapes it. Bishops in conservative contexts look to Rome for permission as much as for doctrine. When Rome treats pastoral courage as a threat to
unity, it gives cover to those who would rather not try. When it makes room – even quietly, even imperfectly – it shifts what other bishops understand to be possible. That is not a Western preoccupation. It is a universal claim, and it requires pastoral courage to act on it rather than simply preach it.

There is also something else Leo said that I keep returning to: “All are welcome; all are invited. All are invited to follow Jesus, and all are invited to look for conversion in their lives.” Said to everyone, this is a beautiful call to ongoing discipleship. But asked in the
specific context of LGBTQIA+ Catholics and same-sex blessings, the phrase “look for conversion in their lives” does not land as universal. It lands as directional. LGBTQIA+ Catholics will hear it – have long been trained to hear it. But conversion of heart is not a
one-directional call. The Gospel asks it of everyone, including those who have yet to fully extend welcome.

If Leo is right that justice, equality, and freedom are the Church's greater moral priorities, then the most urgent conversion is not among those asking to be blessed. It is amongst those who continue to withhold that blessing – and amongst the bishops
whose pastoral courage has not yet caught up with the Gospel they preach, which insists on the full humanity of every person.