By Fr. Gerald E. Murray, The Catholic Thing - The endorsement of civil unions for same-sex couples by Pope Francis in the film Francesco, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, is a true scandal in both the technical and popular meaning of that term. He has repudiated the teaching of St. John Paul II that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions” and that the “legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage..."