Mexico broadcaster: Pope’s civil union quote not broadcast
Comments date back to May 2019
MEXICO CITY — A Mexican television broadcaster confirmed Thursday that Pope Francis’ bombshell comments endorsing samesex civil unions were made in a May 2019 interview that was never broadcast in its entirety.
Broadcaster Televisa said Thursday that the emphasis of its interview was on clergy sexual abuse and suggested it didn’t consider the comments on civil unions newsworthy because Francis had previously indicated support for them.
The Vatican, which had the full interview in its archives, apparently allowed the comments to be aired now in the documentary “Francesco,” which premiered Wednesday.
In the movie, shown at the Rome Film Festival, Francis said gays shouldn’t be kicked out of families or made miserable. “What we have to have is a civil union law; that way, they are legally covered,” Francis said.
But a source in Mexico familiar with the interview said the original raw footage the Vatican provided to Televisa from the interview did not include the quote on civil unions.
The Vatican did not respond to requests for comment.
When the pope consents to such interviews, the Vatican television unit films them and provides full footage to the correspondent in question to edit and choose what to use. The Vatican takes that edit and the final product goes out simultaneously via the broadcaster and Vatican media.
The civil union comments caused a firestorm, thrilling progressives and alarming conservatives, given that official Vatican teaching prohibits any endorsement of homosexual unions.
While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio endorsed extending civil union protections to gay couples as an alternative to moves by the country to approve samesex marriage, which he firmly opposed. However, he never came out publicly in favor of legal protections for civil unions as pope, and no pontiff before him had, either.
One of Francis’ top communications advisers, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, insisted Wednesday the pope’s comments were old news, referencing the May 2019 interview with Televisa.
“There’s nothing new because it’s a part of that interview,” Spadaro told the Associated Press. “It seems strange that you don’t remember.”
But Televisa didn’t air those comments when it broadcast the interview — nor did the Vatican when it put out its own recordings and a transcript of it.
The broadcaster, in a statement to AP, said it chose to highlight the pope’s more “journalistically relevant” comments on sexual abuse in the comments it did air, which came just months after Francis hosted bishops from around the world for a child protection summit at the Vatican.
“The mention of unions between people of the same sex was something that the pope had already mentioned on other occasions prior to our interview in 2019,” Televisa’s statement said.
The Vatican frequently edits the pope in official transcripts and videos, especially when he speaks on sensitive issues. Yet, a version of the full footage was apparently still available in the Vatican archives, which were opened to filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky.
Apparently referring to Francis’ position in Argentina, the documentary used the previously unbroadcast quote about Francis’ support for a law governing same-sex civil unions, or “a law of civil cohabitation,” as it was referred to in Argentina.
Further muddying the waters was the fact that Afineevsky, when pressed by reporters late Wednesday, said the pope made the comments to him directly, through a translator, but declined to say when.
The AP was provided with a preview of the documentary under condition it not report on the film until Wednesday’s premiere. In an interivew Oct. 14 with the director, AP asked if he realized that Francis’ comments were going to grab headlines.
Afineevsky dodged the question about the origin of the quote and seemed to not appreciate its significance. But he said he hoped journalists would take more away from the film.