{"id":5667,"date":"2025-05-08T23:08:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T23:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/pope-francis-championed-inclusion-lgbtq-catholics-hope-a-new-pope-will-finish-what-he-started\/"},"modified":"2025-05-08T23:08:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T23:08:24","slug":"pope-francis-championed-inclusion-lgbtq-catholics-hope-a-new-pope-will-finish-what-he-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/pope-francis-championed-inclusion-lgbtq-catholics-hope-a-new-pope-will-finish-what-he-started\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis championed inclusion. LGBTQ Catholics hope a new pope will finish what he started."},"content":{"rendered":"
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As the conclave<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is held to select a new pope<\/a><\/span>, LGBTQ Catholics hope that the next leader of the church will continue the inclusion work Pope Francis started more than 20 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pope Francis, who died at 88 last month, was the first pontiff to be publicly inclusive of the LGBTQ Catholic community. He didn’t change doctrine, but he changed the conversation by voicing support for legal civil unions, personally meeting with LGBTQ groups and extending blessings to individuals in same-sex unions<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

“Francis was really a breath of fresh air, and a revolutionary in the way he was telling Church leaders to approach and relate to LGBTQ people,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic outreach that educates about and advocates for LGBTQ persons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DeBernardo said the previous two popes before Francis held anti-gay views, probably the most strident in the Church’s history. Under Francis, the papacy adopted a different tone toward the LGBTQ community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some clergy and Catholics within the community hoped\u00a0the conclave<\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u2014 in which\u00a0some front-runners<\/a><\/span> appear to share Francis’ inclusive views \u2014 will continue along his path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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St. Peter’s statue and cardinals during the funeral ceremony of Pope Francis at the Vatican on April 26, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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“Who am I to judge?”<\/h2>\n

Just four months after Francis became pope in 2013, he created controversy when, during a July inflight press conference, he responded to a journalist’s question about gay clergy members. He said: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis’ answer went against years of Catholic precedent.<\/p>\n

These words, which reverberated worldwide, set a very different tone<\/a><\/span> from the previous relationship the Church had with gay clergy and members. His predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI were far less accepting of LGBTQ people. Benedict XVI published the first modern formal statement<\/a> denouncing homosexuality in 1986.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The treatise was written by Benedict while he was still a cardinal under Pope John Paul II. John Paul endorsed Benedict’s message, and he also explicitly denounced legal recognition for same-sex marriage. Those sentiments prevailed in 2003 when the Vatican officially opposed<\/a> same-sex unions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In response to the Vatican’s hardline stances, LGBTQ people held protests during John Paul’s 1987 U.S. visit. During his trip he stopped in multiple cities, but the resistance was most notable during his time in San Francisco<\/a>. San Francisco was reeling from the AIDS epidemic and during the visit, the pope was met with activists holding protest signs and participating in candlelight processions and prayer vigils, hoping to enact change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is an official document that outlines Catholic beliefs, the Church still views homosexual acts as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law.” The text says that homosexual tendencies are “objectively disordered.”<\/p>\n

Cristina Traina, a professor in the Theology department at Fordham University, says the language used in the catechism to describe homosexuality doesn’t easily translate into everyday life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You could read [“objectively disordered”] as just a technical term, but people read it as fundamentally evil and broken,” Traina said. “It’s a technical term, but it certainly does not work pastorally.”<\/p>\n

With his public comments, Pope Francis began to change the narrative. Francis called homosexuality “a human fact,” during a May 2024 interview<\/a><\/span> with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell. He personally met with LGBTQ Catholic groups, including DeBernardo’s New Ways Ministry, and he clarified that transgender people can be baptized and serve as godparents. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Pope Francis and Norah O’Donnell speak during a 2024 interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Potential for continued progress<\/h2>\n

Traina sees the potential for continued progress within the Church despite the death of Pope Francis, because attitudes among everyday Catholics have changed.<\/p>\n

“These things change on the ground and in practice, and then they change at the Vatican, and that’s the last thing that changes,” Traina said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 2020 study<\/a> from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that there were approximately 11.3 million LGBTQ adults in the U.S., and about 5.3 million of them are religious, including about 1.3 million who are Roman Catholics.<\/p>\n

Although 69%<\/a>\u00a0of Americans support same-sex marriage, political figures such as Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, continue to push for traditional family values and support laws allowing for religious exemptions to LGBTQ protections. While campaigning for his U.S. Senate seat in 2022, one of the laws he said he would vote “no” for is the Respect for Marriage Act<\/a><\/span>, which provided federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Teresa Thompson is a member of Catholic Lesbians<\/a> at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York. Catholic Lesbians was founded in 1995 and has over 300 members.<\/p>\n

Thompson, who grew up Catholic, started to distance herself from religion during college, which also coincidentally was when she came out as a lesbian. Although her move away from religion was not due to her sexuality, she felt as though she couldn’t return to Catholicism. That began to shift when Francis adopted a more compassionate tone toward LGBTQ people, and Thompson discovered communities that welcomed her.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the conclave, Thompson expressed hope that the next pope will continue the work Francis started.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Cardinals attend the sixth Novemdiales Mass held for the late Pope Francis, in St. Peters Basilica, May 1, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Antonio Masiello\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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“I think there’s a sense of nervousness, not being sure what is going to happen,” Thompson said. “If we look at the structure of the College of Cardinals, Francis appointed so many cardinals that it seems unlikely we would \u2026 go back, but also, who’s to say?”<\/p>\n

Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of New Ways Ministry, believes the next pope will mirror the path of Pope Francis<\/a><\/span> rather than undo his legacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“My sense is that the cardinal electors will elect somebody who [will follow] in the footsteps of Pope Francis,” Gramick said. “So if that proves correct, then the changes that Pope Francis brought about will not be undone.”<\/p>\n

In her conversations with LGBTQ Catholics, Gramick says that she senses a lot of hope for the future, and there is hope for a pope who will go even further than Francis did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“[LGBTQ] people, they’re looking for more changes, and I think the primary change they’re looking for is to change the sexual ethics teaching of the church,” Gramick said. “The catechism has not been changed yet.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watching the conclave for clues<\/h2>\n

With the conclave set to begin, some of the cardinals<\/a><\/span> who could be contenders seem poised to continue Francis’s legacy. As CBS News has reported, they include:<\/p>\n