"Cardinal Schönborn cites death penalty revision when asked about changing Catechism on LGBT issues"

"Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has argued that changing the Catechism’s teaching against accepting LGBT issues was a matter for the Pope, but added that the Catechism’s passages on the death penalty had already been changed.

Speaking to journalists at a press briefing for the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn fielded a number of questions regarding the synod’s process and the possible future for the Catholic Church. In particular, he was asked if he anticipated any changes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning homosexuality, since LGBT individuals find the catechism’s words 'hurtful.'

'The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a work of the [C]hurch, promulgated by the Pope,' he said, about the text whose completion he helped to oversee. He noted that there has been one change to the catechism since its promulgation: 'when Pope Francis intervened on the death penalty.' Francis declared in 2018 that the death penalty is 'inadmissible,' which he has since repeated numerous times, despite theologians arguing that he is contradicting 'Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church.'

'It is no secret that John Paul II already wished that the death penalty would be explicitly condemned,' argued Schönborn, adding that 'Mother Teresa explicitly asked John Paul II for this change.'

This he posited as an example of the kind of change which could perhaps take place in the future.

So in the debate on doctrine on the faith there are now two saints who wanted change. Further changes? I don’t know. Only the Pope is the one who can decide.

But while he shied away from directly stating there would be change, Schönborn offered an insight into his thoughts. He urged people to 'read the texts as a whole,' noting that Pope Francis speaks about the aspects of 'objective order and human beings.'

In light of this, Schönborn suggested that the Church has to accept individuals, regardless of the life decisions, such as actively living an LGBT lifestyle:

Human beings always have right to be respected even though they sin, which they all do. We have right to be respected. We have a right to be accepted.

The 78-year-old cardinal continued, highlighting a call for accompaniment. Schönborn argued: 'So a person is accepted by God, then this person’s journey, well, it depends on this persons’s history, and a person has to be accompanied.'

Schönborn previously expressed his strong opposition to the Vatican’s 2021 ruling prohibiting same-sex 'blessings,' arguing that the judgment 'hurts many people to the core.'"