Pope Leo gives top post to feminist who supports gay blessings

[Stone]

Pope Leo gives top post to feminist who supports gay blessings

Claudia Leal Luna criticized the Vatican's 2021 ruling against blessings for gay unions,
arguing that Catholic sexual morality needs to take 'some steps.'

Nov 6, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has named Chilean theologian Claudia Leal Luna as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, placing a vocal critic of the Church’s 2021 rejection of blessings for homosexual unions in a senior Vatican post.

The appointment, announced on Thursday, pairs Leal with Jesuit Father Avelino Chicoma Bundo Chico. Vatican News and the dicastery’s own announcement confirm that Leal, born December 12, 1977, holds a law degree from the University of Chile and a doctorate in moral theology from Rome’s Alphonsian Academy.

Leal’s record on sexual morality has drawn scrutiny, especially concerning her criticism of the Vatican’s traditional position against same-sex union blessings, following the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 Responsum stating that the Church considers such blessings “illicit.”

Just days following the release, in a March 17, 2021, interview with Radio Universidad de Chile she countered that the “sexual morality of the Christian tradition still needs to take some steps.”

She called the document’s anthropology “somewhat taxidermic” and objected to its distinction between blessing persons with homosexual inclinations and blessing their relationships.

A personalist approach, she argued, would treat relationships as “constitutive of what we are as persons.” The Responsum, approved by Pope Francis, reaffirmed that God “does not and cannot bless sin” while distinguishing the person from acts the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes as “intrinsically disordered.”

Her 2022 essay “La recepción de Amoris Laetitia en Chile” records further disappointment that Pope Francis’s 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia had not gone far enough. She wrote that the papal letter produced “no innovation whatsoever with regard to the situation of sexual diversities in the ecclesial community.”

Invoking the law of gradualness, she stated that “the good is not the same for everyone” and credited Amoris laetitia with giving “legitimacy to an important group of ‘Pastorales de la Diversidad Sexual,’” i.e., groups that serve those with “dissident sexual identities.”

The same essay notes that the document opened space for Catholic women to examine “the compatibility between Christianity and feminism,” citing Pope Francis’s affirmation that he “values feminism.”

Leal has also identified herself as a feminist without qualification. In a December 23, 2021, interview with El Dínamo, she said: “Anyone who has studied social ethics cannot refuse the cause of feminism. A society where women have the same rights and opportunities as men is a happier world.”

She welcomed political focus on gender equality and “the rights of LGBT+ groups,” recounting that her “hair stood on end” at the inclusive address of Chile’s constitutional convention president Elisa Loncon. She teaches a course on “Sexuality in the Christian tradition” that, in her words, demonstrates the tradition is “much less monolithic than people think.”

Leal taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile from 2012 to 2022 and has served since 2022 as full professor of fundamental theology of the family at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. She is already a consultor at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and was appointed to the International Theological Commission on October 19, only two weeks prior to this present appointment.

InfoVaticana has highlighted these statements in its coverage of both the October International Theological Commission appointment and the new undersecretary role, noting the absence of any public retraction of her 2021 remarks.

In a statement released by the dicastery, Leal said she received the new post “with gratitude to the Holy Father Leo XIV for the trust he has placed in me” and observed that “every border I have crossed has confirmed for me that human development always has a face and a name, and that no one is a stranger in the Church.”

She entrusted the role to Pope St. John XXIII, asking that he teach her “to serve with his gentleness and trust, in the Church that he wanted to be a Church for all.”

The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, under Prefect Sister Alessandra Smerilli and Pro-Prefect Cardinal Fabio Baggio, addresses migration, care for creation, and related issues of human development. Father Chicoma Bundo Chico, the co-appointee, brings experience in migration policy and described his role in terms of “presence, commitment, and witness.”