
Matteo Maria Zuppi by Francesco Pierantoni / Wikimedia Commons (Left)
CV NEWS FEED // Cardinal Matteo Zuppi reportedly praised “queer” families at an Italian film festival last week, saying that “the point is to love each other.”
The Daily Compass, an Italian-based Catholic news outlet, reported that Cardinal Zuppi—regarded by some to be a candidate for Pope Francis’ successor—answered a question from journalists at the Giffoni Film Festival regarding the Church’s relationship with the queer community.
According to a news release from the festival, Cardinal Zuppi reportedly said that “everyone must be in the Church” and added that in his opinion, the term “queer” means a “bond” that can exist “without there necessarily being a legal aspect.”
He referenced the queer family of a woman named Michela Murgia, who lived with four children that were not biologically hers. Over the course of several years, Murgia was in and out of several relationships, one of which was reportedly with a woman.
Murgia had reportedly called her nontraditional family “in essence a commune,” adding that “there are no roles, despised as masks…”
According to the Daily Compass, terms like husband or wife were not used or addressed in the Murgia household. She reportedly said: “Inside this family everything has changed, the roles rotate. In the traditional family this does not happen, because it is blood that determines them. A father is always a father. And sometimes this is a life sentence. Both for the father and for the children.”
The Daily Compass called Murgia’s family a “complete subversion of the order that God has placed in the nature of the family,” and added that Cardinal Zuppi’s only remark on the family was to say that “the point is to love each other.”
“Murgia’s ‘family queerness’, which Zuppi likes so much, is nothing other than the systematic deconstruction of every relationship that has its foundation in creation: sonship, paternity, maternity, spousal love,” the Daily Compass reported.
The Daily Compass called for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to give attention to Cardinal Zuppi’s comment and asked other cardinals to take his words into account whenever a conclave occurs to elect the next pope.
