Rome — A metropolitan archbishop has become the first prelate to issue guidance to his flock on the Vatican’s declaration allowing same-sex blessings. In it he firmly prohibits priests and faithful from accepting or performing any form of blessing of couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples.
In a statement dated December 19, and sent to all priests and parishes in his archdiocese, Archbishop Tomash Peta of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, together with Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider, firmly contend that the new declaration, Fiducia supplicans, is a “great deception”, and that its proposed blessings of same-sex couples “directly and seriously contradict Divine Revelation and the uninterrupted, bimillennial doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church".
