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USA Today, by Marc Ramirez: “Who am I to judge?”

With those five words, Pope Francis signaled that his papacy was going to be different from his predecessors’, especially when it came to LGBTQ issues.

In 2013, the pope was barely a few months into his pontificate when reporters pressed him about the issue of gay priests as he returned to Rome from a trip to Brazil.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said. “We shouldn’t marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.”

As the 88-year-old pontiff struggles to regain his health while being treated for pneumonia and other health issues at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, LGBTQ community members and advocates say one of his greatest legacies will be having changed the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to LGBTQ issues: More than any previous pope, they say, he has transformed the Vatican’s attitude toward the community from one of indifference and condemnation to one that is more tolerant and even welcoming.

“I believe Pope Francis will be known as one of the most consequential popes in Catholic history,” said Father Bryan Massingale of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee and a professor of theology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York.

Still, nearly a dozen years after the Pope’s initial statement, official church doctrine remains largely unchanged, and there remains no room in the Roman Catholic Church for same-sex marriage. Instead, the pope has negotiated transformation mostly through words and actions, allowing for open discussion of LGBTQ issues in contrast to previous popes who ostracized or even punished bishops for bringing them up or ministering to the community.

“The pope has said there’s moral validity and spiritual grace contained in gay relationships, and that’s very empowering even if he’s not allowing for more sacramental recognition,” said Michele Dillon, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. “It has had an impact on people’s lives.”

Massingale, who is gay, recalled hearing Pope Francis’ comment for the first time.

“I never imagined I would hear a Catholic pope speak so warmly and positively about the LGBTQ community,” he said.

In the years since, Pope Francis has made unprecedented outreach to the community, calling for global decriminalization of same-sex relationships, allowing priests to bless such relationships and extending Vatican invitations to members of the transgender community.

“He made clear that transgender people were welcome at Masses over which he presided, that they could be godparents and that he approved of civil unions,” said Catherine O’Donnell, a professor of history at Arizona State University in Tempe. “He allowed the blessing of gay couples, as long as it did not appear to be a marriage ceremony. All of that really mattered.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a national Catholic outreach group that advocates for LGBTQ acceptance and equity, was among a delegation who met with the pontiff in October, including members of the transgender and intersex communities. He said the pope was engaged and supportive.

DeBernardo’s organization, based in Mount Rainer, Maryland, conducts educational programs and consultations with Catholic parishes and schools hoping to increase LGBTQ outreach.

“I’ve been in the field for more than 30 years, and it has never been busier than during the papacy of Pope Francis,” he said. “People who would been afraid to even say the words are now public about doing ministry with the LGBTQ community.”

The papal meeting with New Ways Ministry marked a striking turnaround from 1999, when the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – presided over by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI – had barred the organization’s founders, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, from conducting pastoral outreach to gay people.

Pope Francis, DeBernardo said, “has tried to build a listening church rather than just shutting them out. He’s called for the Church to be inclusive of all people.”

Pope’s record on LGBTQ issues ‘complicated’

The pope’s record on the LGBTQ front hasn’t pleased everyone. Some, especially traditionalist bishops in Asia and Africa, feel he’s been too progressive, while some LGBTQ advocates say he could have done more.

The pope drew headlines last year when he was reported to have used a derogatory Italian term for gays in a closed-door meeting with Italian bishops while talking about the country’s seminaries, a comment for which he publicly apologized the next day.

Elizabeth Sweeny Block, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Saint Louis University, said even as the pope has modeled inclusivity by meeting with members of the transgender community, he has shown the Church can only go so far.

“He has condemned so-called ‘gender ideology’ repeatedly – a deeply problematic and derogatory phrase and one without clear definition,” Block said, adding that while Pope Francis has integrated more science into his papacy – for instance, in Laudate Deum, his 2023 encyclical on the environment – he hasn’t shown the same engagement on issues of gender.

“People who are members of the LGBTQ community are understandably still waiting for more concrete changes in the Church on the ground,” Block said.

Pope Francis’ LGBTQ legacy is complicated, said Meli Barber, president of Dignity USA, a national organization working for LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church and in society. On one hand, she has never felt more welcomed in the Church: Pope Francis, she said, “speaks to us in our own language.”

Catholic doctrine and declarations under Francis’ reign, however, have told a different story. While expressing acceptance and urging community freedom from discrimination and criminalization, the pope has continued to maintain that nontraditional relationships are inconsistent with God’s plan while characterizing gender transitioning as on par with human crises such as poverty and sexual abuse.

“That’s really hurtful and harmful,” Barber said.

Guiding change through words and actions

Dillon, of New Hampshire, said Pope Francis has nonetheless demonstrated that LGBTQ people can be more integrated into the Church. Rather than focusing on sex and sexuality, she said, he recalibrated Church priorities by focusing on core tenets like loving one’s neighbors and spreading the gospel “instead of what amounts to a denunciation of people’s private lives.”

His speech to that effect, just after his election, “sent a chill down my back,” Dillon said. “That was such a change from the words we had previously heard from the Vatican, which were declarations talking about the sinfulness of gay behavior.”

The pope’s statements and actions, she said, have gone a long way toward healing the wounds of 1986, when the Vatican document “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” called “the inclination of the homosexual person” an “objective disorder” and a “tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”

“He’s recognized the stability that same-sex unions can offer,” Dillon said. “There’s grace to be found within gay relationships – that’s what allowing the blessing acknowledges. That added major momentum.”

DeBernardo, of New Ways Ministry, calls Pope Francis “very courageous” for reversing the Church’s harsh stance. Still, he said, pockets of the Church remain, even in the U.S., where LGBTQ people aren’t welcome.

“We still hear stories of people being excluded or going to church and hearing ignorant or negative sermons about LGBTQ people,” he said. “But the Catholic Church is a big ship, and I give him a lot of credit for starting to turn it around.”

Dillon agreed, saying Church doctrine regarding sexual morality changes slowly.

“If you go back to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, people forget that the Church affirmed its view that artificial contraception is sinful,” she said. “But from the early 1970s onwards, many Catholics in the West practiced it and still considered themselves good Catholics and participated in communion. So, the doctrine doesn’t get formally changed, but the silence of the Church allows doctrine to evolve to how Catholics live their lives.”

Then came Pope Francis, whose words and actions have brought LGBTQ issues into the open.

“These are huge developments and can’t be taken away,” Dillon said. “Maybe the next pope won’t talk about these issues. But they are out there, and it was Pope Francis who shifted the discourse.”

Will Pope Francis’ LGBTQ record endure?

That’s why advocates say Pope Francis’ legacy on these issues are likely to endure, no matter who may succeed him.

“It’s hard to put the toothpaste back in the proverbial tube,” DeBernardo said. “If the worst happens and we get someone 180 degrees opposite Pope Francis, the Church won’t move forward as quickly, but I don’t think the good he has done will be undone.

“More than any decree or policy, a pope’s influence is about setting a tone in the Church,” DeBernardo continued. “Pope Francis set a tone of welcoming and dialogue. He gave people the courage to do outreach to LGBTQ people.”

Block, of Saint Louis University, agreed. Pope Francis, she said, has cultivated a Church that embraces dialogue and prioritizes human dignity over rigid, abstract moral rules.

“Francis’ pastoral approach is the beginning of a seismic shift, even if it is far from complete,” Block said. “He has opened his arms to those on the margins.”

Dillon said Pope Francis has appointed the majority of cardinals who will select the next pontiff, many no doubt aligned with some of his more progressive views – but that’s not necessarily a predictor of how someone will act as pope. For example, she said, before he became Pope Benedict, Cardinal Ratzinger was highly outspoken on sexual morality, but as leader of the Catholic Church he focused more on charity and environmentalism.

“When someone actually takes on the mantle, they’re going to see Catholicism differently,” Dillon said. “It’s a different role with different responsibilities.”

Massingale, the Milwaukee priest and Fordham University instructor, said that while every pope is different, “I find it hard to believe the next pope will radically change the trajectory of where Francis has brought the Church in terms of LGBTQ issues.”

“This pope has gone further than any other pope in Catholic history and has opened the door for evolution,” Massingale said. “The Church is a worldwide institution and while there are things obvious to us in the U.S. and in Europe, other parts of the world have to grow in their own way. He wanted to keep the world walking together.”

Our Comment:
The pope and the papacy are attempting to normalize LGBTQ lifestyles in Western societies.

Prophetic Link:
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” Luke 17: 28, 30.

Source References

• ‘Who am I to judge?’ With five words, Pope Francis set new tone for Catholic Church