By Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which had its premiere at the Rome Film Festival on Wednesday.
The papal thumbs up came midway through the film that delves into issues he cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said in one of his sit-down interviews for the film. “What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. However, he had never come out publicly in favor of civil unions as pope.
Director Evgeny Afineevsky had remarkable access to cardinals, the Vatican television archives, and the pope himself. He said he negotiated his way in through persistence, and deliveries of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he got to the pope via some well-connected Argentines in Rome.
Scientists have found a dead Asian giant hornet north of Seattle, the first so-called murder hornet discovered in the country this year.
A huge diamond weighing more than 1,000 carats, which could be the third-largest mined in history, has been discovered in the southern African country of Botswana.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the city of Philadelphia violated the Constitution by limiting its relationship with a Catholic foster care agency over that group's refusal to certify same-sex couples as foster parents.
President Joe Biden has signed legislation Thursday establishing a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery, saying he believes it will go down as one of the greatest honors he has as president.
The headlines out of the Biden-Putin summit, the first new federal holiday in 40 years, the Fed's economic outlook, podcasts coming to Facebook and more.
How much do you think cops make? A few hundred thousand per year? It sounds extreme, but this is the case in many cities across the country thanks to a slew of financial perks in ironclad union contracts.
A Portuguese teenager has found a message in a bottle that traveled at least 2,400 miles from a Vermont teenager.
Just 40 years ago, New York City's Times Square was a very different place: crime-ridden and adult theaters as the main source of entertainment. Cheddar explains how it went from this to one of the top tourist attractions in the world.
Jill and Carlo preview the big sit-down in Geneva today, the momentous reopenings in California and New York, what we're spending our money on post-COVID and more.
New York City-based artist and creative director Jonathan Rosen debuted his first collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) on the Nasdaq stock exchange's seven-story-tall, curved digital tower.
