How does Pope Francis’s support for same-sex civil unions, demonstrating the revolutionized attitude toward sexual minorities of the Vatican, promote the acceptance of LGBTQ+ groups by the public in general, and the Catholics in particular?

Abstract

This paper evaluates actions that have been taken by Pope Francis to include people of the LGBTQ+ community into the Catholic Church, and the opportunities and risks of such actions as well as the problems arising from them. The work utilizes the theoretical framework developed by Max Weber to describe the context of these transformations. Pope Francis’s liberal views as showcased from his 2013 statement on endorsing same-sex civil unions can be identified as a shift in the Church’s attitude towards LGBTQ+ people. These actions have therefore promoted an atmosphere of acceptance among LGBTQ+ Catholics and have also provoked the rest of the Catholic society to change its perception towards the LGBTQ+. Public opinion has also changed to be more liberal concerning the Catholic Church under Francis’s papacy as indicated by polls. Nevertheless, criticism persists in the sense that there have been no doctrinal changes and there are still conservatives within the church who are opposed to change. This paper employs a qualitative synthesis of the current literature to examine the multifaceted effects of Pope Francis’s stance on LGBTQ+ acceptance and employs Weber’s sociology to explain the connection between religious institutions and social change.