14-05-2025
The queer flock of Pope Leo XIV
On May 8, over 1.3 billion Catholics around the world watched with rapt attention as the burgundy drapes on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City opened to reveal a new Supreme Pontiff. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now elected by a conclave of his brother cardinals as Pope Leo XIV, walked out smiling and waving to the crowds below, wearing the regalia eschewed by his immediate, unassuming predecessor, Pope Francis. The hopes of queer Catholics were shattered soon after, however, when it became apparent that some of his past views on our lives didn't quite merit the labels centrist and moderate, which the international media adopted to describe him.
Two distinct assertions from the Holy Father, made at previous junctures in his long ministry, indicated conservative opinions on the place that gender and sexuality must hold in social life. In 2012, while Prior General of the Augustinian Order, then Father Prevost lamented to the World Synod of Bishops that the media was 'extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that [were] at odds with the Gospel.'
Prevost listed the 'homosexual lifestyle' as a 'choice' that was particularly susceptible to such inordinate compassion. In a video produced by the Catholic News Service, interspersed with images from the TV shows Modern Family and The New Normal, which depict ordinary queer families, Prevost emphasised that 'alternative families comprised same-sex partners and their adopted children [were] so benignly and sympathetically portrayed in television programmes and cinema' within a larger spectrum of 'mass-media produced distortions of religious and ethical reality.'
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In 2017, after being appointed head of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, then Bishop Prevost objected to a government plan to upgrade the school curriculum to teach gender and sexuality. He advanced the case against 'the promotion of gender ideology', a shorthand for a range of reactionary fears in a world that increasingly did not view gender as binary. Such instruction, he argued, was confusing, 'because it [sought] to create genders that don't exist,' and leapt 'towards the ideology that [aimed] to eliminate all biological differences between male and female.'
The severity of these pronouncements filled queer Catholics with a sense of dread. Apart from referring to us in language brimming with indignity, the new Pope appeared convinced that living the mundane routine of our daily lives openly constituted an ideological enterprise. This harked back to the spectre of the gay agenda, a pejorative, and damaging trope deployed by the American Christian right at one point, to view the queer community with alarm and suspicion.
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Were Pope Leo XIV to continue this earlier approach into his papacy, it would reverse the remarkable progress made by the Catholic Church's public emphasis on empathy, inclusivity, and compassion under Pope Francis. The implications for queer Catholics in India could not be more striking. Dr Andy Silveira, a queer Catholic from Goa, maintains, 'For far too long, under the pretext of doctrine, inconsiderate words uttered by those on the pulpit have resulted in violence and even suicide. We desperately need to be open to the possibility of accepting two human beings, irrespective of their gender, choosing to love and commit themselves to each other.'
On the line is Pope Francis' Fiducia Supplicans declaration, which, beginning in 2023 allowed priests to bless couples in 'irregular situations', including unmarried heterosexual and queer couples, as long as such blessings did not offer the impression of a marriage ceremony. Pope Leo XIV has taken a step back from his precursor: neither endorsing nor rejecting the declaration, holding that due to cultural differences, national bishops' conferences should have the authority to allow or disallow these blessings in their local contexts. Whether this approach may be viewed as withdrawing autonomy from ordained ministers, who may have performed such blessings without requiring further approval from the local hierarchy, remains to be seen.
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Given these explicit positions, the queer Catholics hope that Pope Leo XIV's ministry does not witness the absence of ecclesiastical embrace, of the kind they had grown to be used under Pope Francis' pontificate. Prior to the Conclave, the official College of Cardinals report noted, tactlessly, that Cardinal Prevost was 'somewhat less favourable to currying favour with the LGBTQ lobby than Francis was.' It also noted that he was being promoted as a potential compromise papabile, if leading conservative or progressive candidates were unable to garner enough votes. This report listed the blessing of queer couples as one of the 10 schismatic issues the Church confronted today, ranking second only to the ordination of women. While this grading suggests how central gender and sexuality are to Catholic identity in the 21st century, it also signifies that queer people still enjoy sufficient support within the hierarchy, just perhaps not enough to push an enlightened contender past the two-thirds majority required to become Pope.
Propping up the reluctant optimism that many queer Catholics feel is the knowledge that Pope Francis' own receptiveness towards the queer community came largely after his election to the papacy. Back in 2013, in his first interaction with the media as Pope, he had said, 'If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?' Queer Catholics yearn for a similar orientation with the new Pope. 'I'm hopeful with Pope Leo XIV that there might deeper work done to embrace LGBT Catholics within the church,' remarked Dr. Silveira. Rachael Alphonso, an ally of the community from Mumbai, said that in spite of her initial disappointment, she now holds 'a renewed hope' for the Pope to see that queer people 'are equally beloved children of the Creator, and are inherently deserving of justice and full equality within our Church.'
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Perhaps the pleas of queer Catholics will be heard, after all. After Pope Leo XIV's election, Catholic News Service made public a previously unreleased 2023 video interview with then Cardinal Prevost, in which he appears to have recalibrated his views on the 'homosexual lifestyle', under Pope Francis' influence. 'Given many things that have changed, I would say there's been a development in the sense of the need for the Church to open and to be welcoming,' Prevost said, 'and on that level, I think Pope Francis made it very clear that he doesn't want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress, or whatever. Doctrine hasn't changed, and people haven't said, yet, you know, we're looking for that kind of change, but we are looking to be more welcoming and more open, and to say all people are welcome in the church.' While it doesn't refer to queerness directly, this statement has gone some way in quelling the anxiety many queer Catholics had initially experienced.
Upon taking office, Pope Leo XIV has also emphatically insisted on promoting a 'Synodal Church', i.e. a church whose structures are more inclusive and participatory. This appeal leaves the door open for us, queer Catholics to participate courageously within its structures, and make the case, parish by parish, diocese by diocese, for our lives to acknowledged and recognised by the wider Catholic community. Only through such grassroots efforts during this pontificate can we hope to keep our dreams of a just and all-encompassing Catholicism alive.
Mario da Penha is a doctoral candidate in History at Rutgers University, and leads work on LGBTQIA+ issues within the Professionals' Congress. While raised Catholic, and grounded in the Church, he is a freewheeling person of faith without a fixed creed. The views expressed are personal.
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