(LifeSiteNews) — In light of increasing challenges to the Church’s teachings on the family and marriage, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and 23 autonomous sister associations worldwide released “A Filial and Apprehensive Supplication to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.” The document delivered to the Vatican is dated September 15, 2025.

The statement takes note of the Holy Father’s defense of marriage in recent statements. However, it notes sectors within the Church that affirm heterodox positions that are sowing confusing among Catholics worldwide.

The message of the TFPs calls upon the Holy Father to speak out against these erroneous opinions. It echoes a 2015 petition to Pope Francis titled, “Filial Appeal to His Holiness Pope Francis on the Future of the Family.” That document noted a widespread confusion among Catholics, “arising from the possibility that a breach ha[d] opened within the Church that would accept adultery—by permitting divorced and then civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion—and would virtually accept even homosexual unions.” At the time, the TFPs and sister organizations asked Pope Francis “to clarify the growing confusion amongst the faithful” and prevent “the very teaching of Jesus Christ from being watered down.”

That appeal to Pope Francis collected 858,202 signatures, including those of 211 prelates and many priests and religious, before being presented to the pontiff on September 29, 2015.

The new appeal shows and documents that, far from rectifying the situation, Pope Francis took measures favoring a pro-homosexual stand through speeches, actions, and gestures.

A steadily worsening situation

As the new pontiff starts to develop his policies, there is a great need for clarity to avoid dangers to the Faith. The document references the unorthodox positions taken by many Church hierarchs and theologians, for example:

• Most Rev. Francesco Savino, vice-president of the Italian Bishops Conference, French Archbishop Hervé Giraud, and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg, have all called for an “updating” of Church teaching that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered” and that homosexual practices are “acts of grave depravity.” Cardinal Hollerich has extended his position to say that the teachings are “incorrect” since their sociological and scientific bases are allegedly “no longer valid.”
• Nor is that the most extreme position. Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, archbishop of Washington D.C., denies that sexual sins are grave, paving the way for the legitimization and normalization of impurity. He also affirms the “radical inclusion” of practicing homosexuals so that they can receive both absolution and the Holy Eucharist without abandoning their sinful ways of life.
• Austrian theologian Father Ewald Volgger insists same-sex unions are actually beneficial – “an image,” as he puts it, “of divine solicitude for men.” Swiss theologian Daniel Bogner argues that it is necessary to end “the rigid fixation on biological sex and the necessary heterosexuality of spouses,” since “fertility does not have to be understood exclusively in terms of biological reproduction.”

Scandalous actions

The words of these Church figures are accompanied by scandalous actions especially manifested during a special homosexual Jubilee “pilgrimage” where Father James Martin, a prominent figure in this so-called “ministry” met with the Pope. He reported that “I was honored and grateful to meet with the Holy Father this morning in an audience in the Apostolic Palace and heard the same message I heard from Pope Francis on LGBTQ people, which is one of openness and welcome: ‘Todos, todos, todos.’ I found the pope serene, joyful, and encouraging.”

At later events in the Jesuits’ Jesu Church in Rome and St. Peter’s Basilica, pilgrim organizers made no effort to hide its approval of these relationships, as some homosexual pairs entered hand in hand. A rainbow cross and provocative T-shirts could be seen in the homosexual group.

Holding firm to truth

The appeal makes the request that “a word from Your Holiness is the only way to clarify the growing confusion.” It concludes by making two specific requests to Pope Leo XIV:

• “We beseech you to annul Pope Francis’s June 5, 2017 rescript, which conferred special magisterial value on the heterodox interpretation of the ambiguities of Amoris laetitia, and clearly reiterate that those who are divorced and civilly remarried and living more uxorio cannot receive sacramental absolution nor, as public sinners, Holy Communion.”
• “We implore you to revoke the Declaration Fiducia supplicans and reaffirm the prohibition on granting any blessing to homosexual pairs as established in the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of February 22, 2021, regarding a dubium on blessings for same-sex pairs.”

The document was aptly signed on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. In the face of today’s crisis inside the Church, the TFPs will be circulating the appeal worldwide in defense of Catholic morals, true marriage, and the traditional family. As they have done for decades, the TFPs will continue calling for the solutions proposed by Our Lady at Fatima, who promised the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart.