Pope Francis, the “People’s Pope” and one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most beloved pontiffs, who was laid to rest today after passing into the arms of God on Easter Monday at age 88, nonetheless left behind a complicated legacy on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church — one of dashed hopes and waiting for change that largely never came.
“Many of us had high hopes that some positive changes around LGBTQ+ teachings would come from the worldwide Synod,” said Meli Barber, President of DignityUSA. “That has not happened as of yet. We are waiting for the report from the working group charged with addressing controversial issues.
“But the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues is now part of the mainstream of our Church. LGBTQ+ Catholics, our family members, friends, fellow Catholics, and frontline ministers all spoke openly about our lives, our gifts, the discrimination we have faced, and the depth of our faith. This cannot be erased.”
I remembered his statement in 2013 when Francis responded to a question about a possible “gay lobby” in the Vatican. His answer set off global shock waves. “When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby,” he said. “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?”
The pontiff’s public statement then comprise the most LGBTQ+-affirming remarks the world had ever heard from the Catholic Church. The Advocate named Pope Francis its 2013 Person of the Year.
Francis commanded attention around the world with his liberal-leaning pronouncements, but he was a complicated, confusing figure to LGBTQ+ people. On the surface, Francis displayed a pastoral countenance to his papacy that extended to our community. However, during Francis’s tenure as pope, I came to depict him as the consummate flip-flopper whose good intentions never fully followed up with good actions. And in some cases, he exhibited outright hypocrisy.
For example, he approved blessings for same-sex couples if the rituals didn’t resemble marriage. In October 2020, while being interviewed for the documentary “Francesco” about his life, Francis made a full-throated endorsement of same-sex civil unions — again setting off global shock waves.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” the pontiff said in the film. “You can’t kick someone out of a family nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way, they are legally covered.”
Francis’s statement was a hallelujah moment for many LGBTQ+ Catholics. It optimistically suggested a game-changer — having dogma-transforming ramifications — for the Church in this 21st century despite conservative priests still being hell-bent on continuing down the anti-modernity track of his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
However, marriage equality was out of the question as Francis repeatedly criticized “gender theory” as an “ideological project” that “denies the natural difference between a man and a woman.”
Marriage between people of the same sex? “Marriage is a historical word. It’s always between a man and a woman in humanity, and not only within the Church. We cannot change that. This is the nature of things. This is how they are. Let’s call them ‘civil unions,’ ” Francis stated in 2017 to New Ways Ministry, a pro-LGBTQ+ Catholic organization.
Francis called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, which LGBTQ+ advocates hailed as a milestone that would help end harassment and violence against us, as he also publicly distinguished between homosexual acts as a sin and not a crime.
Francis also had a complicated relationship with the transgender community. In his 2015 tome “Pope Francis: This Economy Kills,” he compared transgender people to nuclear weapons, as destroyers of God’s creation of male and female. But he also repeatedly embraced a specific community of transwomen.
In Torvaianica, Italy, a community of transwomen, many of whom were sex workers, were welcomed and seated as Francis’s guests at a luncheon to celebrate the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor in 2023. This wasn’t their first time lunching with the pontiff. They had received VIP seats to Francis’ monthly gatherings ever since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also, in 2023 the Vatican agreed to baptize transgender Catholics and allow them to be godparents. This was 180 degrees from 2000, when the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denounced the existence of transgender people — but nothing in terms of actual church doctrine changed, sadly.
The Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor, with the message “Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor,” was an example of the Church at its best regarding welcoming everyone. It allowed the faces of transgender people not to be hidden.
The Catholic Church still excludes the LGBTQ+ community from officially receiving any sacraments. Since 2015, DignityUSA has advocated for “sacramental equality” in the Catholic Church. With COVID-19 death rates hitting LGBTQ+ communities globally as hard as other minority communities worldwide, one would think the Church could put aside its homophobia.
Pope Francis was no doubt a humble man with a sincere heart. He took the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century mystic, whose ministry, like the one Pope Francis exhibited during his lifetime, showed an unwavering dedication to help the poor, vulnerable and marginal. Pope Francis’s theology of the preferential option for the poor, the core tenet of Liberation Theology, and the biblical mandate in Matthew 25:31-40 that says to feed those who are hungry, homeless, immigrants, etc., made it clear that he saw and knew the faces of the suffering.
But he looked the other way when it came to his LGBTQ+ worshippers. It was not enough for Francis to say he embraced our community. He also needed to do it.
May he rest in peace.
Public theologian, syndicated columnist and radio host Rev. Irene Monroe is a founder and member emeritus of several national LBGTQ+ black and religious organizations and served as the National Religious Coordinator of the African American Roundtable at the Center for LGBTQ and Religion Studies in Religion at Pacific School of Religion. A graduate of Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary, she served as a pastor in New Jersey before studying for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and serving as the head teaching fellow of the Rev. Peter Gomes at Memorial Church. She has taught at Harvard, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Episcopal Divinity School and the University of New Hampshire. Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s Research Library on the History of Women in America.