Marc Frings, the general secretary of the Central Committee of German Catholics, has said that a change in official Church teaching on homosexuality is “urgently required.”

Frings—whose organization has joined with the German bishops’ conference to sponsor the Synodal Path—called for “the recognition of the equality and legitimacy of non-heterosexual orientations, their practices and relationships.” He said that the Church should “enable ‘safe spaces, where queerness can be lived”—but went on to say that this would be “only an intermediate step.”