Pro-life leaders from all over the world gather in Rome for the Rome Life Forum, a conference which has been happening in Rome since 2014. In this press conference, Cardinal John Paul II, Pope John Paul III, and Bishop John Paul V discuss abortion, homosexuality, and the traditional family in Africa.
00:02:19.100Honorable Lucy Akello. Thank you, John, and the press, and my colleagues who are here. I want to start with reading a Bible verse, and then I'll make my statement. And it is in Matthew 16, 18. And I will not read the whole thing, but it says,
00:02:48.100And I tell you, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
00:03:12.560This for me is my opening statement, and it is on that places that I stand firm, as one of those who comes here to say no to whatsoever, is to condemn the sin of the good departure from the teachings of the church as revealed by the holy scriptures.
00:03:36.120The Catholic Church has stood the test of time since time immoral. It's my duty to speak out to the things that will divide the church handed over to us by Jesus himself.
00:03:51.420In Africa, in Africa, in the case of Uganda, we received and welcomed the missionaries who brought to us the gospel.
00:04:00.660In 1877, we had the church missionary societies that brought in the gospel through the anchor of the Protestant church.
00:04:12.000And immediately in 1879, the white fathers came and brought to us the gospel.
00:04:18.660The two rivaled, the Anglican and the Catholic rivaled, but one thing that united them was the fact that they preached what resonated with the African values and practices.
00:04:36.200And these were received warmly by the then king, in Uganda, in Uganda, by the then king, Mutesa, they gave them land, they allowed them to do their work.
00:04:48.520And this is where we come from. We received the gospel because it resonated with our practices, with our values.
00:04:56.320The Uganda martyrs, I think you've heard about them, the Uganda martyrs were killed by one king called Mwanga, who wanted to force them, and I want to add a line, he wanted to force them into a homosexuality act.
00:05:14.520Because this was the king who was practicing this.
00:05:18.500They rejected this act because, one, it was against their practice and values as Africans, and secondly, the new religion that they had been taught, that is Christianity.
00:05:35.260So both was against the act of homosexuality.
00:05:42.780Today in Uganda, the Christian faith grew because of the blood that the Uganda martyrs shed.
00:05:51.320Every third of June, if you come to Uganda, you will see millions of people gathered in one place to celebrate the life of the Uganda martyrs who gave up their life.
00:06:03.660To say no to acts which Jesus rejected, and no to acts which were forbidden in the African culture.
00:06:14.780Because religious beliefs, many African Catholics adhere to these traditional teachings of the church, which are based on interpretation of the Bible.
00:06:26.100We believe that the teachings on the issues such as abortion and homosexuality are in accordance with the faith we have practiced for generations.
00:06:36.160Our cultural belief often puts a strong emphasis on family and traditional gender roles.
00:06:52.480In my culture, when I conceive, I don't need, I don't even need to, to, to, to go announcing once they know I have conceived.
00:07:03.720I don't even need to wait for my stomach to protrude, protrude for you to know that Lucy is pregnant.
00:07:09.220If by, by, by, by bad luck, I lose this pregnancy, I will give this little baby, this innocent baby, the best burial any other human being will be accorded to.
00:07:23.460And that is how much we attach life to these innocent children.
00:07:53.120We believe that African Catholic faith groups hold conservative views on social issues.
00:07:59.340We believe that the Christ teachings align with our values and preferences.
00:08:04.720We feel that changes in the child policies through the synod on seniority will be an unwelcome departure from these conservative positions.
00:08:16.740And then more concerns concerned many African Catholics believe that issues such as abortion
00:08:22.620and homosexuality and homosexuality go against still our ethical principles.
00:08:29.840I believe, and I go back to the scripture that I read.
00:08:34.880This is a church that was handed over to us by Jesus Christ himself.
00:08:41.540I want to believe that we will not reach a point where a division of policies will end up this, I mean, fragmentating our, you know, our church, our beautiful Catholic church that was led over to us.
00:09:00.100I traveled all the way from Uganda, hundreds of thousands of kilometers to Rome.
00:09:08.440The Western brought, the Western countries brought us religion.
00:10:56.300And number two, the treatment of homosexuality, the potential for the discussion about blessing gay unions, has everything to do with undermining marriage.
00:11:07.200And most importantly for everyone in our audience who are seeing these videos or hearing us today, it has to do with your children.
00:11:14.380And then, heterosexually, normal people are going to be under massive moral assault if at the highest levels of the Catholic Church they're seriously discussing blessing one of the sins that Christ had for vengeance.
00:11:29.800Over and above that, in his October, I want to appeal to authority.
00:11:33.260That's what Kathy said that we are just here opinionating.
00:11:37.080In his October 24th interview with Edward Pension of the National Catholic Register, Gerhard Cardinal Muller noted that at the Synod on Synodality, quote,
00:11:48.560all is being turned around so that now we must be open to homosexuality and the ordination of women.
00:11:55.860If you analyze it, all is about converting us to these two themes.
00:12:01.720Now, his eminence is using, in my opinion, the word converting with purpose and forethought, because that has to do with what's going to happen to the church over the next 12 months, converting, moving us to a different position, the Catholic world.
00:12:17.680This first stage of the Synod is all about converting the Catholic world to new moral realities here before, never seen in the history of the church, in the history of Christianity.
00:12:28.460I intentionally am wearing, this is especially for people back home, and intentionally wearing this press pass so that I can attest to something that's extremely important,
00:12:39.800because we're seeing a lot of people on YouTube this morning who are crowing that nothing happened that was all that serious at the Synod.
00:12:47.240I recognize some of you, members of the press, who were in the Vatican Press Hall over the past 10 days, past week, and you know very well what's happening here.
00:13:22.600Father James Martin just today stood on the rooftop of the Jesuit building and said it again to the world on YouTube that this was all about Synodality, not the specifics,
00:13:32.740because Cardinal Muller is quite right, in my opinion.
00:13:35.580It's a conversion process between now and next year.
00:13:40.7402024 Synod, that Synodality, is where these specifics will be answered.
00:13:45.620So those people who are on YouTube saying nothing happened, I'm sorry, friends,
00:13:50.180they have no idea from the United States or from anywhere else what's actually going on here.
00:13:55.700If they're just looking at that final document, the 40-page document, they have no idea what the agenda is.
00:14:01.560Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we've been in that press hall this week.
00:14:04.020You know very well what this agenda is, and we all have an obligation to put the world and the church on notice of what that agenda truly is.
00:14:37.200The Catholic Church is being accused in her traditional manifestation, traditional teaching, of being what they call religious supremacism, guilty of religious supremacism.
00:14:48.320So if the Catholic Church holds position on the ordination of women, for example, on feminism, for example, then it's at odds with the mainstream of its position.
00:14:58.160Or if the Catholic Church has a position on homosexuality that is at odds with the mainstream globalist agenda, the Catholic Church must change.
00:15:07.680So everything that we're seeing here is about an agreement of the church at the highest levels to comply with this idea of equity and inclusion.
00:15:17.200To not allow women to be ordained is exclusion, not inclusion.
00:15:21.260And so these things are going to have to change.
00:15:23.040But the question of homosexuality, the church is very clear, and this is what has to change.
00:15:29.080The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, number 2357, says that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
00:15:43.120But it's important to reassert this because this is the change, the teaching that has to change if the synodal process is going to happen and we're to become a synodal church.
00:15:53.040How can the church offer God's blessings on gay unions or unrepentant gay persons without blasphemously asking God to bless intrinsically disordered and mortally sinful acts?
00:16:10.200The discussion itself at this synod, therefore, is a scandal according to how scandal is defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
00:16:19.520Blessing gay unions is not mentioned, as I said, in the final document of the synod, but this topic is certainly on the synodal docket, if you will.
00:16:31.300In his October 2nd answer to the dubia raised by Cardinal Burke and the other cardinals on the question of blessing so-called gay unions,
00:16:38.260Pope Francis himself notes that the Catholic Church, he says, in pursuit of pastoral prudence, should discern if there are ways of giving blessings to homosexual persons that do not alter the church's teaching on marriage.
00:16:58.740This has nothing to do with marriage, and I think Pope Francis knows that it has nothing to do with marriage.
00:17:04.140This concerns the synodal discussion itself, the discussion, and our children are hearing this discussion,
00:17:10.000that even in Rome, at the highest levels of the Catholic Church, there is a discussion going on about blessing those who are engaged in sexual intercourse outside of marriage,
00:17:20.160which, since the Catholic Church rejects homosexual same-sex marriage, is an impossibility.
00:17:25.820Whatever we are blessing here is going to take place, the acts are going to take place outside of the marital union, obviously.
00:17:33.060So how can pastors now, or one year from now, bless those whose lifestyles include extramarital acts that can under no circumstances be approved by the church?
00:17:46.660It cannot, and so the church teaching must change if we are to have a synodal church.
00:17:52.860Furthermore, how could such blessings, this is important, I'll close on this,
00:17:56.720how could such blessings not be regarded by our children, by the children of the world, heterosexual, normal children, young people?
00:18:05.040How could it not be regarded as the Catholic Church closing a blind eye to fornication in general?
00:18:13.500If homosexual unions can be blessed, then simple logic dictates that heterosexual unions with acts that are being committed outside of marriage can be blessed as well.
00:18:26.160And that's the message that the world, the young people of the world, are going to receive by all this talk about blessing gay unions.
00:18:33.500Any synodal talk of blessing gay unions signals, in other words, a sea change,
00:18:38.520that the Catholic Church no longer takes seriously her own moral teachings, prohibiting cohabitation, sex outside of marriage, and fornication.