LGBTQ+ Catholics make the Holy Year a pilgrimage to Rome, recognizing a new sense of acceptance

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics And their families participated in a pilgrimage of the Holy Year to Rome on Saturday, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church after much feeling rejected and accrediting Pope Francis with change.

The vice president of the Italian Bishop Conference, the French Bishop Savino, celebrated Mass for the pilgrims in a Chiesa of the Gesu Full, the main Jesuit church of Rome. He received a sustained feet ovation in the midst of his homily when he recalled that the retirement celebrations were historically destined to restore hope to those of the margins.

“The jubilee was the time to free the oppressed and restore the dignity to those who had denied it,” he said. “Brothers and sisters, I say this with emotion: it is time to restore dignity to all, especially those who have denied it.”

Several LGBTQ+ groups participated in the pilgrimage, which appeared in the official calendar of Vatican events for the Holy Year, the celebration of Catholicism of a century of each. The Vatican organizers emphasized that the list in the calendar did not indicate support or sponsorship.

The main pilgrimage organizer was an Italian LGBTQ+ defense organization, “Jonathan’s Tent”, but other groups participated, including Dignityusa and Outreach, another American group.

“I was here 25 years ago in the last holy year with a contingent of LGBTQ people in the United States and we were actually detained as a threat to the programs of the Holy Year,” said Marianne Duddy Burke of Dignityusa.

To be invited to walk through the sacred door of the Basilica of San Pedro “totally recognized as who we are and the gifts we bring to the Church, and that we have our faith and our combined identities, it is a day of great celebration and hope,” he said.

A 2020 study of the Williams Institute of UCLA discovered that there were about 11.3 million LGBTQ adults in the United States, and about 5.3 million of them are religiousincluding approximately 1.3 million that are Roman Catholics.

Pope Leo XIV celebrated a special audience of the Jubilee on Saturday at the Vatican for all groups of pilgrims in Rome this weekend, but did not mention special Catholics LGBTQ+.

A LGBTQ+ acceptance legacy

Many of the pilgrims attributed their feeling of welcome to Francis. More than any of its predecessors, Francis distinguished himself with a welcome message. Four months after Francisco became Pope in 2013, he caused controversy when, during a press conference on the July flight, he answered a journalist’s question about the members of the gay clergy, saying: “If someone is gay and looks for the Lord and has good will, who should I judge?” Francis’s response was against years of Catholic precedent.

His words Establish a very different tone From the previous relationship, the Church had with the clergy and homosexual members. His predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, were much less accepting of LGBTQ people. In 1986, Benedict XVI published the first modern formal declaration that denounced homosexuality.

He never changed the teaching of the Church, saying that homosexual acts are “intrinsically messy.” But during his papacy from 12 years from 2013 to 2025, Francis met with LGBTQ defenders, Ministrated a community of trans women and, in a 2023 interview with News, declared that “being homosexual is not a crime.”

Franciswho died at age 88 earlier this year, did not change the doctrine, but altered the conversation expressing support for legal civil unions, gathering personally with LGBTQ groups and extending Blessings to individuals in same -sex unions.

John Capozzi of Washington, DC, who participated in the pilgrimage with her husband, Justin del Rosario, said that Francis’s attitude brought him back to the church after he left her in the 1980s, in the apogee of the AIDS crisis. Then, he said, he felt rejected by his Catholics.

“There was that feeling that it was not welcome in the church,” he said. “Not because I was doing something, just because I was who it was,” he said. “It was this fear of returning due to trial.”

But Francis, who insisted that the Catholic Church was open to all, “all, all,” changed all that, he said.

“I was a locked Catholic,” said Capozzi. “With Pope Francis, I could leave and say: ‘Hey, you know, I am Catholic and I am proud of it and I want to be part of the Church.”

“Tears of hope”

Capozzi spoke during a vigil service only for the standing room for pilgrims on Friday night in the Jesuit church. The service had testimonies of homosexual couples, the mother of a trans child and a moving reflection of an Italian priest, the Reverend Fausto Focosi.

“Our eyes have known rejection tears, to hide. They have known the tears of shame. And perhaps sometimes those tears still arise from our eyes,” said Focosi. “Today, however, there are other tears, new tears. Wash the old ones.”

“And today these tears are tears of hope,” he said.

Leo’s position becomes clearer

Leo’s position on LGBTQ+ Catholics had been a question. Shortly after being elected in May, comments arose since 2012 in which the future Pope, then known as the Reverend Robert Prevost, criticized the “homosexual lifestyle” and the role of the media in the promotion of acceptance of same -sex relationships that conflict with the Catholic doctrine.

When he became a cardinal in 2023, Catholic News Service asked Prevost if his views had changed. He recognized Francis’s call for a more inclusive church, saying that Francis “made it very clear that people do not want people to be excluded simply on the basis of the elections they take, be it lifestyle, work, way of dressing or whatever.”

Leo met Monday with Reverend James Martin, an American Jesuit who has advocated greater welcome for LGBTQ+Catholics. Martin emerged, saying that Leo told him that he intended to continue Francis’s policy of LGBTQ+ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to maintain his defense.

“I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people,” Martin told News after the audience.

Savino said he had also received Leo’s blessing to celebrate the Mass for LGBTQ+pilgrims.

Del Rosario, the husband of Capozzi, said that he was now welcome after a long time staying away from the faith in which he was raised.

“Pope Francis influenced me to return to Church. Pope Leo only strengthened my faith,” he said.

• LGBTQ+
• Papa Leo XIV
• Catholic church