CV NEWS FEED // Fr. Joseph Williams, a Vincentian priest serving in Chicago, apologized last week for the nature of the same-sex couple blessing he gave on April 21 where he asked the couple if they “recommit themselves as holy spouses.”
“The shape that the blessing took as portrayed in the video came about due to my attempt to provide for them a meaningful moment of God’s grace,” Fr. Williams said on May 8. “I wanted to do it well. A week or so after the fact, I viewed the video. I immediately realized that I had made a very poor decision in the words and visuals captured on the video.”
“I am deeply sorry for any confusion and/or anger that this has caused, particularly for the People of God,” he said.
Fr. Williams is a member of the Congregation of the Mission Western Province, which published the apology in a statement.
The statement added that Fr. Williams says “he regrets the language of the blessing and the use of vestments and the church itself, which he now recognizes were a violation of the norms approved by the Church.”
Fr. Williams performed the blessing in his parish, St. Vincent de Paul, after Kelli Knight, a Methodist minister in a same-sex unión, requested the blessing about a month prior.
The statement highlighted that although “Pope Francis in December formally approved the blessing of couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples, he specified that such blessings do not equate to a wedding and should not employ the clothing and gestures that accompany a wedding,” which Fr. Williams did explain to Knight.
As CatholicVote previously reported, Fr. Williams said he told Knight at the time of the request, “Please understand that this is not in any way a marriage, a wedding, anything like that. This is just simply a blessing of persons.”
Fr. Williams told the news outlet Our Sunday Visitor that he wrote the blessing himself and that it was the first blessing of a same-sex couple he had ever been asked to give.
The statement added: “Fr. Williams said that the experience has been a valuable learning experience for him.”
