The Vatican’s office responsible for church doctrines: the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), has said the Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions despite their “positive elements”, saying it is impossible for God to “bless sin”.

The CDF made the clarification, Monday, while answering if the church has the power to give the blessings to same-sex unions.

The response by the CDF, signed by Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the doctrinal office, read “Negative.”

“Blessings are not allowed, because what is to be blessed needs to be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord..

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex,” it wrote.

The CDF said that though such relationships might have positive elements to be valued, that did not make them “legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the creator’s plan”.

It also observed that while God “never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world… he does not and cannot bless sin.”

The CDF denied that its declaration was “a form of unjust discrimination”. Instead, it said it was a “reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite and of the very nature of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them.”