The Discourse of the Catholic Church: Abortion, homosexuality, and pederasty

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyse the differences and similarities in the discourse of the former Pope Benedict XVI and his successor, Francis I, regarding homosexuality, abortion and pederasty. A corpus composed of 5 speeches, messages, pastoral letters and interviews will be examined by means of the Appraisal Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. For the purpose of this study, episodes will be used as units of analysis. These will be selected according to the controversy they created amongst Catholics, non-Catholics and resistance groups. It was found that although Pope Francis I seems to have adopted a more lenient discursive behaviour, the underlying conservative features of the Catholic Church are still present and these do not foster full dialogical exchanges.