US bishops have said that Pope Francis addressed the importance of abortion and gender ideology during their recent ad limina visit in Rome.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, who also chairs the Pro-Life Activities Committee of the bishops’ conference told Catholic News Service the Pope agreed with the US bishops for "identifying the protection of the unborn as a preeminent priority". At their November meeting, the bishops added language calling abortion "the preeminent issue” to their quadrennial voting guide issued in advance of this year’s presidential elections.
His response to that was: "Of course, it is. It's the most fundamental right," Naumann recalled the Pope saying. He added tht the Pope said: "This is not first a religious issue; it's a human rights issue." Naumann said this was "so true”. He said the Pope asked him to extend his encouragement to the pro-life community in the US.
Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri qualified Naumann’s remarks. He said the Pope “simply reiterated what he's already said in many different ways", which is that "without life, what other rights are there? So, you have to begin with that. It's not the only issue – I don't think anybody has ever said that. But when you're looking at the core beliefs and the more essential rights, the right to life of the unborn is very important.”
Archbishop Robert Carlson of St Louis said the while the Pope “certainly talked about abortion as a preeminent issue, at the same time he said there's another significant issue and that would be 'transgender' – where we are trying to make all human beings the same, it makes no difference, you can be whoever you want to be.” Francis has criticised so-called “gender ideology” on several occasions. The Pope, Archbishop Carlson said, brought the issue up as an example of “another significant issue in our day.
Asked whether Francis gave the bishops any advice on how to handle the transgender debate, Carlson said Francis touched on the way proponents believe people are “all one and that there’s no difference, which would fly in the face of what John Paul II talked about on complementarity and it would fly in the face of the dignity of the woman and the dignity of the man, that we could just change into whatever we wanted.”
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