First published October 22, 2020.
Photo credit: Daily Mail.
In October 2020 a new documentary about Pope Francis put a short clip in front of the world: the pope saying that gay people belong in families and that civil union laws should protect same-sex couples. Headlines called it a historic endorsement. The short answer to what actually happened is this: Francis did voice support for legal civil protection of same-sex couples, but he did not change Catholic teaching on marriage, and the Vatican later explained that the clip had been stitched together from a 2019 television interview.
Both parts matter. The words were genuinely his and genuinely new for a pope to say on camera. The context explains why the reaction was so intense, and why the church's official position stayed where it was.
What Pope Francis said in the documentary
The film, Francesco, was directed by Russian-born filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky and premiered in Rome on 21 October 2020. In one scene the pope speaks warmly about gay people and their place in family life. As quoted widely at the time, he said:
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God.”
Moments later in the film he adds that “what we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.” The phrase “civil union law” was what made the clip travel. Earlier popes had spoken about respect for gay people, but none had been heard openly backing a legal framework for same-sex couples.
Where the clip actually came from
The remarks were not recorded for the documentary. According to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and reporting by Catholic News Service, they came from an interview Francis gave to Valentina Alazraki of the Mexican broadcaster Televisa, which aired in May 2019. Televisa had not broadcast the civil union passage at the time. Afineevsky obtained the footage and joined lines from separate moments of that conversation into what looked like a single answer.
In early November 2020 the Secretariat of State sent a note to papal ambassadors around the world. It said the pope had been speaking about particular state laws, not church doctrine, and that the film had presented passages from different points of the interview as one answer, without the context needed to understand them.
Civil unions and church marriage are different questions
The most common misunderstanding was that the pope had approved same-sex marriage in church. He had not. Catholic teaching holds that sacramental marriage is a union of one man and one woman, and nothing in the documentary or the later Vatican note changed that.
A civil union is something else: a legal status granted by the state that can cover inheritance, hospital visits, pensions, property and similar matters. Francis had shown openness to this kind of arrangement long before he was pope. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2010, when Argentina was debating same-sex marriage, he reportedly floated civil unions as a compromise inside the Argentine bishops’ conference, though he strongly opposed the marriage bill itself. In a 2014 interview with Corriere della Sera he likewise said that gay unions cannot be equated with marriage while noting that states regulate various forms of cohabitation.
So the 2020 clip was less a reversal than a clearer, more public version of a view he had expressed before. What was new was hearing a sitting pope say it in his own voice.
How LGBT groups and conservative Catholics reacted
Reaction split along familiar lines. LGBT advocacy groups welcomed the words as a sign of warmth from a church that many gay Catholics had experienced as cold. ILGA-Europe said the statement deserved careful attention and that it would watch whether churches turned it into real change. Stonewall, the British charity, described the moment as powerful and pointed to its own research suggesting that about a third of lesbian, gay and bisexual people of faith are not open about their orientation in their religious communities.
It’s immensely powerful and moving to hear Pope Francis endorse civil unions for same-sex couples. We know from our research that a third of lesbian, gay and bi people (32%) aren’t open with anyone in their faith community about their sexual orientation. https://t.co/JfPQZ8a1hI
— stonewalluk (@stonewalluk) October 21, 2020
Some bishops pushed back the same day. Thomas Tobin, then Bishop of Providence in Rhode Island, said the comments contradicted long-standing teaching, adding that “the church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships.” Other conservative commentators questioned whether the pope had been quoted fairly, which is one reason the Vatican’s later explanation about editing received so much attention.
Many ordinary Catholics landed somewhere in between: glad to hear a pastoral tone, but unsure what, if anything, had changed in practice.
What changed later, and what did not
The documentary did not lead to new church law. In March 2021 the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that priests could not bless same-sex unions, a ruling Francis approved. Then in December 2023 the same office published Fiducia supplicans, which allowed priests to give short, informal, non-liturgical blessings to people in same-sex relationships, while again stating that this was not a blessing of the union or a form of marriage. That document drew strong objections from bishops in parts of Africa and elsewhere, showing how divided the global church remained.
The pattern across those years was consistent with the 2020 clip. Francis repeatedly sought a gentler, more welcoming tone toward gay people, while leaving the core definition of marriage untouched.
Who Pope Francis was
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires on 17 December 1936, so he was 83 when the documentary premiered. Before religious life he trained as a chemical technician and worked in a food laboratory, and he also held jobs as a janitor and, by his own account, as a nightclub bouncer. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in March 1958, at 21.
Elected on 13 March 2013, he became the first pope from Latin America, the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. He was often described as the most reform-minded pope in modern times, though historians tend to be careful with superlatives like that, and his changes were more about tone, priorities and church governance than about doctrine. He died on 21 April 2025, aged 88, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XIV in May 2025.
How to read papal remarks in the news
This episode is a useful reminder for anyone following religion stories. A pope’s words in an interview, a documentary or a press conference on a plane carry weight, but they are not the same as a formal teaching document. When a quote seems to signal a dramatic shift, it is worth asking three questions: where was it first said, was it edited, and has any official text followed? In 2020 the honest answers were a 2019 TV interview, yes, and no.
That does not make the remarks meaningless. For many gay Catholics and their families, simply hearing the head of their church say they belong in a family was significant, and that is why the clip is still remembered.
Sources: Wikipedia: Pope Francis; Chicago Catholic / CNS: Secretariat of State note (2 November 2020); Euronews (21 October 2020); Stonewall UK on X.
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