The Argentine media is attributing to the “Francis effect” the decision by the archbishop of the country’s second city, to allow the daughter of a lesbian couple to be baptised in his cathedral.
The Archbishop of Córdoba, Carlos José Ñañez, is also allowing the couple to be confirmed prior to the baby’s baptism.
Sra Villaroel and her partner, Soledad Ortiz, were married in 2013 under Argentina’s equal marriage law, passed in July 2010.
As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio famously insisted that all children should be baptised, whatever the situation of their parents.
In September 2012 the future Pope said: “In our Church region there are priests who do not baptise children of single mothers because they were not conceived within the sanctity of marriage. They are today’s hypocrites. They clericalise the Church. They keep the people of God from salvation. And the poor girl who had the courage to bring her child into the world when she could have returned it to its maker, goes on pilgrimage from church to church to get it baptised.”
Baptisms in the Buenos Aires region are said to have quadrupled as a result of the then Cardinal Bergoglio’s policy.
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