"If acts are intrinsically evil, particular circumstances can diminish their evil but cannot remove it." Does Pope Francis accept this truth?

The Holy Spirit assures us, through the Apostle St. Paul, that Christ is the head of the body which is the Church, while we are the members that suffer together and rejoice together: "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together." (1 Corinthians 12: 26).

Which makes it all the more disturbing that Pope Francis, before his election to the Chair of Peter, asserted that private homosexual unions do not affect third parties or society in general.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that, "..In the sanctorum communio, 'None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.'  'If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.'  'Charity does not insist on its own way.'  In this solidarity with all men, living or dead, which is founded on the communion of saints, the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all.  Every sin harms this communion." (CCC, 953).

Paragraph 817 of the Catechism assures us that "ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body...do not occur without human sin."  And "private" homosexual unions do not affect third parties?  God preserve us from such nonsense!

Granted that when an evil act, such as a homosexual act, is done in public, the resulting scandal compounds its intrinsic evil.  But an intrinsically evil act does not become good or neutral simply because it is performed in private.  The evil nature of the act remains unchanged.  Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, explains that, "If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it.  They remain 'irremediably' evil acts per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person." (No. 81).

Pope John Paul II insists that, "No damage must be done to the harmony between faith and life: the unity of the Church is damaged not only by Christians who reject or distort the truths of faith but also by those who disregard the moral obligations to which they are called by the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 5: 9-13).  The Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it (cf. 1 John 2: 3-6).  And ever since Apostolic times the Church's Pastors have unambiguously condemned the behavior of those who fostered division by their teaching or by their actions." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 26).