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NBC News
10-05-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
LGBTQ Catholics hope Pope Leo XIV continues Francis' legacy of acceptance
In the eyes of many LGBTQ Catholics, the late Pope Francis created a 'seismic shift' toward acceptance. Now, as the world welcomes the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, these lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer faithful say they hope he will continue to move in the same direction. Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the LGBTQ Catholic advocacy group DignityUSA, was in Rome on Thursday when Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old Chicago native who holds both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship, became the new pontiff. 'I was actually quite excited to see that Cardinal Prevost had been elected as Pope Leo XIV and thrilled that he took the name of a pope rooted in social justice. I think what a clear signal to a hurting world that that's where his energy is going to be focused,' she told NBC News in an interview Friday. 'I also found a lot of hope in his remarks from the balcony … where he talked about God's all-inclusive love without any condition, and where he talked about being a church for all of God's people.' Jason Steidl Jack, a gay Catholic and an assistant teaching professor of religious studies at St. Joseph's University, New York, described his reaction to the election of Pope Leo, the first-ever American to lead the Holy See, as 'cautiously optimistic.' 'I do see him continuing Pope Francis' legacy, especially of dialogue and synodality,' Steidl Jack said, describing synodality as 'this idea of journeying together' and 'listening to one another.' However, he said the new pope's election 'doesn't assuage all of the fears that I have as an LGBTQ Catholic.' 'The church's teaching, even under Pope Francis, remains incredibly homophobic, and the church goes on inventing new ways of being transphobic as it really avoids learning about trans people and their experiences,' he said, adding, however, that the new pontiff seems 'open to dialogue and inclusion' given his remarks on Thursday. Chicago resident Greg Krajewski said he's been a practicing Catholic his whole life and sings at his local parish every Sunday. However, he said, as a gay man, he's 'careful who I talk to and how I present myself.' 'There's a few things in his opening speech that he gave that really give me a lot of hope,' he said of Leo. 'The first thing is he said a couple of times, 'God loves us without limits or conditions.' I think this is a really big indication that even if he himself maybe has more reservations about the LGBTQ issues in the church, he is open to those discussions. He is open to bringing us in.' Track record on LGBTQ issues Leo's past comments on LGBTQ issues are limited, though several LGBTQ Catholics expressed concern about remarks he reportedly made in an address to church leaders over a decade ago. During the 2012 Synod of Bishops, then-Father Prevost reportedly lamented the challenges presented to the Catholic Church due to sympathetic media portrayals of 'alternative families.' 'Note, for example, how alternative families comprised of homosexual partners and their adopted children are so benignly and sympathetically portrayed on television programs and in cinema,' he told a group of bishops at the time, according to the Catholic News Service. 'The sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices that the mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully engrained in the viewing public that when people hear the Christian message, it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective.' Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, which works to foster LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church, called the remarks 'disappointing.' 'We pray that in the 13 years that have passed, 12 of which were under the papacy of Pope Francis, that his heart and mind have developed more progressively on LGBTQ+ issues, and we will take a wait-and-see attitude to see if that has happened,' DeBernardo said in a statement. Steidl Jack said Leo seemed to have a 'culture warrior mentality' on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ representation in pop culture back in 2012, but he expressed hope that the new pope's views have changed since then. 'A lot of the world has changed since 2012 — even Pope Francis changed a great deal over the course of his pontificate,' he said. 'So I hope that Pope Leo has been listening to LGBTQ Catholics. I hope he's been paying attention and growing, just as Pope Francis did, just as the rest of the world has been.' Views on LGBTQ issues have shifted dramatically over the past decade, including the views of practicing Catholics. For example, the Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which found 19% of U.S. adults identify as Catholics, found 70% of Catholics favor allowing same-sex couples to marry, up from 57% in 2014. Michael O'Loughlin, the executive director of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, was in Rome for the announcement of the new pope. He said the 2012 comments were disappointing but that he was keeping an open mind. 'I'm willing to look at his wider message, which was one of peace and standing up for the marginalized,' he said. 'The fact that he switched to Spanish to address his former community in Peru I thought was a nice sign that he's a man of the people.' After 2012, the future pope's subsequent remarks on LGBTQ issues are sparse. In 2017, when he was bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, and spokesman of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, he appeared to speak out against 'gender ideology,' a term some people use to refer to transgender identities, telling local media that this ideology 'seeks to eliminate biological differences between men and women.' Then, in 2024, a year after Pope Francis formally approved allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples, then-Cardinal Prevost said the subsequent pushback from bishops in Africa highlighted the need to give more doctrinal authority to local bishops, according to CBCPNews, the news service of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. 'The bishops in the episcopal conferences of Africa were basically saying that here in Africa, our whole cultural reality is very different. … It wasn't rejecting the teaching authority of Rome, it was saying that our cultural situation is such that the application of this document is just not going to work,' Prevost said at the time, according to CBCPNews. 'You have to remember there are still places in Africa that apply the death penalty, for example, for people who are living in a homosexual relationship. … So, we're in very different worlds.' Hopes for the future When asked what she'd like to see from Leo's papacy, Duddy-Burke said she hopes he can serve a 'trusted moral voice.' 'The world is so broken at the moment in so many places — you know, this rise of nationalism, the increased xenophobia, so many wars that are very vicious happening around the world — I just hope that he can become a very clear and trusted moral voice in the world, and some of that means dealing with the inequities and failings within our own church as well,' she said. Steidl Jack said he hopes Leo listens to Catholics with differing viewpoints. 'One of the gifts of Pope Francis' papacy was that he encouraged church leaders to go outside of the church, to listen to people outside of the hierarchy, and that's really what Pope Leo needs to do, especially regarding same-sex relationships and transgender experience,' he said. DeBernardo, of New Ways Ministry, said in his statement that he hopes Leo continues to build upon the foundation that Francis laid out. 'Pope Francis opened the door to a new approach to LGBTQ+ people,' he said. 'Pope Leo must now guide the church through that door.'
USA Today
27-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
With Francis, LGBTQ+ Catholics finally felt seen. Will new pope turn away from us?
With Francis, LGBTQ+ Catholics finally felt seen. Will new pope turn away from us? | Opinion Pope Francis' reforms led to increased visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people within and beyond Catholicism. As we mourn his passing, there is anxiety about whether this progress will be reversed. Show Caption Hide Caption What to expect at the funeral of Pope Francis Pope Francis will be the first pope in more than a century to be buried outside of the Vatican. After the death of Pope Francis on April 21, DignityUSA held a community gathering that night where LGBTQ+ Catholics, our family members, friends and allies could share their grief, hopes and fears. There were moving stories about how moments from Francis' ministry touched individual hearts, and how even glimpses of him during his visit to the United States moved people to tears. Some shared quotes from his writings. Andrés Merino-Restrepo, a bisexual man from Colombia now living in Canada said, 'It always felt as if we had a room in the pope's heart.' Others spoke of their fear that the next pope might undo the progress made toward greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ Catholics in our church. The outpouring of emotion in this quickly organized event testifies to the unprecedented connection between the LGBTQ+ Catholic community and Francis. During his 12 years as leader of the world's largest Christian denomination, Francis spoke about, met with, embraced and issued policies that supported LGBTQ+ people in ways that were unimaginable before his papacy. Pope Francis treated LGBTQ+ people with humanity. Will the next pope do the same? He used the words 'gay' and 'transgender,' rather than the more clinical or dehumanizing terms common to his predecessors. He met with LGBTQ+ people on many occasions, sending pictures from these meetings across the world. He famously placed transgender people under the Vatican's care during the COVID-19 pandemic. He allowed priests to bless same-sex couples and opened baptism and the role of godparent to transgender people. The impact of these and other departures from tradition cannot be underestimated. Further, when Francis called for a worldwide synod of the Catholic Church, he acknowledged that the church had wounded and excluded many – impoverished people, people with disabilities, addicts and LGBTQ+ people among them. Unlike past synods, which involved only bishops, he called for the voices of those the church had failed to be included in listening sessions held in every diocese worldwide. Many LGBTQ+ people, family members and others spoke about the gifts that LGBTQ+ people brought to the church and the many types of discrimination they had experienced within it. And while the LGBTQ+ community was not named explicitly in the synod's final report, these testimonies were included in documents that are now part of the permanent record of our church. Opinion: Who will be the new pope? After Pope Francis' progress, expect a course correction. Due to Francis' willingness to allow open discussion of controversial issues, LGBTQ-positive Catholic theologians felt freer to speak and to publish. He supported priests, bishops and colleges that initiated LGBTQ+ ministries and had close friendships with LGBTQ+ people. All of this led to increased visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people within and beyond Catholic institutions. Even as we and our allies continue to mourn Francis' passing, there is anxiety about whether this affirming trajectory will be halted or even reversed. The concern is understandable. Will the Catholic Church turn its back on LGBTQ+ community? In many parts of the world, as well as in some U.S. communities, church officials and political leaders remain vocal proponents of the belief that living as gay or transgender is incompatible with God's plan for humanity. They lead or support efforts to restrict human rights of LGBTQ+ people, enforce celibacy for gays and lesbians, deny gender-affirming care to transgender and nonbinary individuals, allow the practice of conversion therapy and even criminalize people based on their identity or relationships. Will the next pope support these harmful positions? Will he roll back the hard-won, if still incomplete, acceptance many LGBTQ+ Catholics have come to expect from our church? I think not. The simplest hope I can offer anxious people is numeric. Opinion: I'm a Catholic who craved spiritual connection. I found it in Pope Francis. Francis appointed more than 80% of the cardinals who will elect his successor. While it is true that his appointments were driven less by ideology than by ensuring more geographic diversity in church leadership, he also tended to select men who were known as good pastors. These are people who should prioritize caring for human needs over adherence to less inclusive church practices as they consider the direction a new pope may lead the church. More important, perhaps, Francis inspired a greater sense of ownership of the church among regular believers. Through the global synod called to shape our church's future, millions of people shared their experiences of Catholicism, their struggles to remain in the church and their hopes for change. Thousands of pages document these testimonies in reports from all around the world. I hope that the cardinal electors reflect on and pray over what Catholics want our church to be. If this happens, I am confident that our new pope will also be a shepherd and a clear moral voice in a troubled world. No matter who is chosen to guide the Catholic Church in the years ahead, LGBTQ+ Catholics and those who love us have been empowered. We will continue to work toward full inclusion in our church and our world ‒ and for recognition that we are no more and no less than who we were created to be by a loving God. Marianne Duddy-Burke is executive director of DignityUSA and co-chair of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics. She has served in leadership positions in the Catholic LGBTQ+ movement since 1985.
NBC News
21-04-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Pope Francis created a ‘seismic shift' toward acceptance, LGBTQ Catholics say
In July 2013, Pope Francis posed a question that marked a radical shift in the Catholic Church's treatment of gay people. 'If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?' he asked reporters in 2013. 'Who am I to judge?' Francis died early Monday, the day after Easter, and LGBTQ Catholics and theologians recalled the comment as one of the first Francis made that promoted acceptance of queer people. It was a dramatic departure from the way the previous figureheads of the Holy See and church doctrine had often spoken about gay people, describing homosexuality as ' an intrinsic moral evil ' and an ' objective disorder,' and the relatively accepting tone would go on to become a major theme of Francis' papacy and, now, his complex legacy. Francis would go on to urge parents not to condemn their gay children and approve priests' blessing same-sex unions. However, 'he wasn't perfect' in the eyes of LGBTQ Catholics, said Jason Steidl Jack, an assistant teaching professor of religious studies at St. Joseph's University, New York. Just after the 'Who am I to judge?' remark, Francis said homosexuality is still a sin under Catholic doctrine. He also referred to gay people with slurs on at least two occasions, Steidl Jack said, and spoke negatively about what he called 'gender ideology.' He also said blessings of same-sex couples couldn't resemble traditional marriage vows. But what made Francis' papacy historic is that, unlike his predecessors, he met with LGBTQ people from around the world and listened to their stories. 'He could have conversations that just weren't possible under John Paul II and Benedict XVI,' Steidl Jack said of the two popes before Francis. 'As the years of his papacy went on, he seemed to get more open, both to gays and lesbians, but also to the trans community. This is a level of openness that was unthinkable before Pope Francis. It's been a revolution of compassion, a revolution of welcome, and it's changed the church. It's changed the church's relationship to the LGBTQ community.' 'He sat and held our hands' Francis' positive remarks about the LGBTQ community were a 'seismic shift' in the church's treatment of gay and lesbian people, said Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, which advocates for LGBTQ rights within the Catholic Church. In response to the organization's advocacy, the Vatican issued a controversial 'Letter to the Bishops on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons' in 1986, which resulted in many of the organization's chapters being expelled from their home parishes and barred from meeting on Catholic properties, Duddy-Burke said. Nearly three decades later, the Vatican invited Duddy-Burke, who is also a co-chair of Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, an international organization of LGBTQ Catholics, and two other members of the organization to meet with Francis during a synod assembly in October 2023. They talked to him about the importance of his statement earlier that year calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide, but told him that the sentiment needed to be implemented by Catholic bishops and politicians. They also told him LGBTQ people are often still excluded from Catholic churches, and discussed the importance of gender-affirming health care for transgender people. 'He was very warm, and he laughed with us, and he made eye contact through the whole thing,' Duddy-Burke said. 'He sat and held our hands and hugged one of us.' At the end of their meeting, Francis told them, in Italian, 'Your work is important. Keep pressing on,' Duddy-Burke said through tears as she recalled the moment. She said there was a huge public response to photos and news about the meeting, which 'showed just how significant it was for representatives [of the community] to be seen with the pope.' Michael O'Loughlin, author of ' Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear,' wrote a letter to Francis after O'Loughlin published his book to tell the pontiff about the conversations he had with Catholic nuns and priests who went against the teachings of the church at the time and worked behind the scenes to care for people dying from AIDS-related illnesses. In August 2021, Francis wrote back. The letter was written in Spanish but was translated to English. He thanked O'Loughlin for shining a light on the priests, religious sisters and lay people who supported those who were sick from HIV and AIDS. 'Instead of indifference, alienation and even condemnation, these people let themselves be moved by the mercy of the Father and allowed that to become their own life's work; a discreet mercy, silent and hidden, but still capable of sustaining and restoring the life and history of each one of us,' Francis wrote. 'I'll always remember Francis for creating space for LGBT people to tell our own stories in the church,' said O'Loughlin, who is also the executive director of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic organization. 'While some LGBT advocates point out that he maybe didn't go far enough in what they had hoped he would do, he nonetheless created these opportunities for us to show that we want to live our lives in the church just like any other Catholics.' Max Kuzma, a lifelong Catholic and transgender advocate, said he was also struck by Francis' pastoral presence and compassion when he met the pontiff last year. Kuzma said he introduced himself to Francis, in Spanish, as a transgender man. It was a busy moment, Kuzma said, and Francis was being pushed along in his wheelchair, so he didn't respond verbally. 'But it was his expression and the way that he grasped my hand,' Kuzma said. 'I really felt that moment of acceptance and love and support, a very pastoral feeling when you look in the eyes of the pope.' An uncertain future Though Francis' gestures of acceptance for LGBTQ people set an example for other Catholic Church leaders, Steidl Jack said, it's unclear how far they will carry into the next papacy, because Francis didn't fundamentally change church doctrine. 'If you open up the Catechism, it still describes homosexuality as intrinsically disordered, as something that goes against God's purposes for human sexuality, and that is opposed to human flourishing,' Steidl Jack said. He added that after Francis issued the document allowing for blessings of same-sex couples, he faced backlash from priests in parts of Africa and Eastern Europe, and he was likely afraid that pushing for doctrinal change too quickly would cause a schism in the church. Francis' statements regarding LGBTQ people also haven't been entirely positive and have often been contradictory. For example, at the start of the pandemic, Francis began meeting with trans women, many of them sex workers, at the Vatican. In 2023, he also said trans people can be baptized and can become godparents. However, in March 2024, he called 'gender ideology' the 'ugliest danger' of our time. Kuzma said that statement, combined with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops praising President Donald Trump's executive order barring trans women and girls from competing in female sports, makes him nervous about the future if the next pope is hostile toward trans people. 'That unhelpfully fed into some of the culture war stuff,' Kuzma said, especially in more conservative Catholic spaces, which Kuzma said he used to be a part of. Still, Kuzma said he believes that if Francis had lived longer, he would've formed friendships with trans people in the way he formed a friendship with Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse. In 2018, regarding Cruz being gay, Francis famously told him, 'God made you like this.' In 2021, he appointed Cruz to a commission for protecting minors. Kuzma said such friendships would've likely changed Francis' mind. Steidl Jack agreed, saying that one of the major lessons from Francis' pontificate was that he 'didn't get things right all the time,' but he was willing to listen. 'He was willing to spend time with people and accept them as they are,' Steidl Jack said. 'I believe he grew from that, and I believe the church grew from that as well. And that's where the church needs to continue growing. It's a ministry of listening to, a ministry of openness. It's a ministry of being willing to learn.'
