Returning to the Rome on a flight from Rio de Janeiro in July 2013, Pope Francis was asked about the supposed existence of a “gay lobby” at the Vatican. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will,” the pontiff replied. “Who am I to judge? They shouldn’t be marginalized.”
The statement sent shock waves throughout the church and beyond. Catholic conservatives, long accustomed to centuries of papal judgments on everything from theology to birth control, were aghast, many of them seeking to minimize the remarks by asserting that they did not represent a departure from Catholic doctrine.
James Martin, a Jesuit, however, begs to differ. “Anyone who says nothing has changed in the church today is nuts,” he says, drawing a contrast between Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI. “From ‘No gay priests’ in 2005 to ‘Who am I to judge’ is a sea change.”
LGBTQ advocates also took notice. The Human Rights Campaign hailed “a significant change in tone,” and Donna Red Wing, executive director of One Iowa, said, “This is a step forward for this denomination and certainly for the pope.” Ann J. Robison of the Montrose Center agreed, adding, “We’ll see what happens in practice and whether or not the church becomes more welcoming to the LGBT communities.”
The Roman Catholic Church marks time in centuries, not days, months or years, so it was not surprising that Francis proceeded slowly in the face of criticism from conservatives. Still, over the course of his pontificate, he nudged the church away from condemnation toward, if not acceptance, inclusion.
“God made you like this and he loves you,” he told a gay man in 2018, and two years later he endorsed legal protections for same-sex couples and criticized laws that criminalized homosexuality. He called on Catholic bishops to have “a process of conversion” so that they would respond with “tenderness, please, as God has, for each one of us.”
Whereas the Catholic Church in 2008, under Benedict XVI, had refused to sign a United Nations declaration calling for the repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, Francis chose a different course. “Being homosexual is not a crime,” he said, although he maintained that sex outside of marriage was a sin. “It’s not a crime,” he said. “Yes, but it’s a sin. Fine, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime.”
“We are all children of God,” Francis told the Associated Press in 2023, “and God loves us for who we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity.”
The old maxim that actions speak louder than words may not have its origins in scripture, but it applies to Pope Francis and his posture toward the LGBTQ community.
Many gay advocates criticized the pontiff for not going far enough, but in the face of a cumbersome bureaucracy and the fevered objections of conservatives, he made some remarkable accommodations. On October 21, 2023, for example, he signed a document that allowed transgender people to be baptized and to serve as godparents. Two months later, in a Vatican document entitled Fidus Supplicans, Pope Francis approved blessings for same-sex couples, providing that the rite did not resemble marriage.
“For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection,” the document reads. “There is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”
Gay Catholics responded enthusiastically. “This is huge for the LGBTQ community,” says Richard Zaldivar, founder and executive director of Wall Las Memorias Project, a Los Angeles health nonprofit serving Latinos and the LGBTQ community.
Perhaps just as important as what Francis did for the LGBTQ community is what he didn’t do. Nothing in the church canons requires it, but the standard practice is for archbishops to be elevated to the College of Cardinals. Francis, however, has refused to promote José Gómez, archbishop of Los Angeles, the largest diocese in the United States, to cardinal.
Gómez is an outspoken conservative on many issues, including against LGBTQ rights. He publicly criticized President Joseph Biden for his position on abortion and gay rights, and as head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Gómez led an effort to deny Biden, a devout Catholic, access to Holy Communion because of Biden’s support for reproductive rights. Of note, Gómez and his fellow conservatives have made no move to deny communion to Catholic politicians who support the death penalty, however, which also is contrary to church teaching.
Pope Francis’s refusal to make Gómez a cardinal spoke volumes, especially when he elevated Robert McElroy, bishop of San Diego who is considered more progressive, in 2022. “By naming one of Gomez’s suffragans as Cardinal, and not Gomez himself,” Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter wrote. “The pope has rendered an unmistakable sign of the kind of episcopal leadership he is seeking. An unmistakable sign.”
Pope Francis’s gestures of openness toward the gay community have led to a more capacious definition and understanding of family, one with political implications. When Vice President J.D. Vance ventured into theological waters, the Pope schooled the recent convert to Catholicism on the nuances of Catholic doctrine.
Vance had invoked the notion of “ordo amoris” (“order of love”) to justify the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies. In the Vice President’s telling, love emanates in concentric circles, beginning with those closest to us and eventually to the rest of the world. Therefore, in Vance’s opinion, the United States is justified in prioritizing “American citizens first.”
Francis quickly corrected Vance’s crabbed interpretation. Invoking language strikingly similar to his statements on gays, the Pope emphasized “the equal dignity of every human being.”
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pontiff wrote. “The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Over the course of his pontificate, Francis contended with conservatives and with a cumbersome bureaucracy practiced in the art of resisting change. No one, right or left, was fully satisfied. Traditionalists thought him too liberal, and progressives criticized him for not pushing hard enough for reforms. For instance, in 2024 Francis was forced to apologize for using a slur to refer to gay men and women won only token concessions.
But in his pronouncements about the nature of families and his overtures to the LGBTQ community, Francis moved the church closer, in his words, to “a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
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