“The Catechism is not set in stone. One may also doubt what it says,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich said in an interview published by the weekly Stern.

The influential German prelate, a member of the Council of Cardinals advising the Pope, was alluding to the Church teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts. He said: “Sure, there are people who want to see sexuality limited to procreation, but what do they say to people who can’t have children?”

Cardinal Marx, as past president of the German bishops’ conference, has strongly supported the Synodal Path, in which the German hierarchy has called for changes in Church teaching on sexuality.