What were the milestones and pending issues for Pope Francis and the LGBT agenda?
During his time at the Vatican, Pope Francis referred to LGBT people on more than one occasion.
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Since becoming Pope in 2013, and also during his time as a cardinal, Francis Bergoglio has spoken on several occasions about the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people , areas in which the Catholic Church has maintained, with few exceptions, very regressive positions. While the Pope aligned himself with the institution, his attitudes, sometimes contradictory, were more progressive than those of his predecessors.
Against same-sex marriage, in favor of civil unions
Cardinal Bergoglio was one of the main opponents of the Equal Marriage Law in 2010, during the debate on the legislation in the National Congress and its subsequent approval in Argentina. As Pope, he never approved same-sex marriage, but he made gestures of openness toward sexual diversity that marked milestones in the history of the Catholic Church.
In December 2018, the Vatican authorized the blessing of same-sex couples for the first time. It did so on the condition that this blessing take place outside of liturgical rites so as not to be confused with marriage.
He also expressed support for civil unions for LGBTQ+ people: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or made miserable because of it,” the then-leader of the Catholic Church said in the documentary Francesco.
Homosexuality: “We are all children of God”
In 2023, he reiterated his statements on homosexuality. In an interview for Periodismo Puro , a program hosted by Jorge Fontevecchia (Argentina), he said it was not a crime and spoke of accepting diversity.
“I spoke about homosexuality three times. The first time was when I said, 'If a person is homosexual and seeks God, who am I to judge them?' The second time was when I said to a father or a mother, 'Never throw a homosexual son or daughter out of the house. Accept them, work through it as a family.' And the third time was when I spoke about criminalization. Unfortunately, there are about 30 countries that criminalize homosexuality today. That is very serious. All of God's children, each one of us, seeks God and finds Him in whatever way we can. God only sets apart the proud; the rest of us sinners are all in line,” he said at the time.
Similarly, in another interview with The Associated Press in January 2023, he distinguished between the concepts of “sin” and “crime.”
In response to a question about the Church's stance on homosexuality, he said: “We are all children of God. And God loves us as we are, with the strength with which each of us fights for our dignity. Being homosexual is not a crime. 'Yes, but it's a sin,' they say. Well, let's distinguish between sin and crime. Because a lack of charity toward one's neighbor is also a sin. And how are you doing? Every man and every woman needs a window in their life where they can find hope and where they can see the dignity of God. And being homosexual is not a crime; it's a human condition.”
About transvestite and trans people
In the film Amen, Francis Responds , the Pope was interviewed by several young people, including a non-binary person who asked him about trans and non-binary identities. His response went viral.
-Do you see a space in the Church for trans people and non-binary people or the LGBT community?
Every person is a child of God, every single person. God rejects no one; God is our Father. I have no right to expel anyone from the Church, but it is our duty to always welcome them. The Church cannot close its doors to anyone.
-And what do you think of those church people or priests who promote hatred and use the Bible to support those hate speeches?
– Those people are infiltrators ( laughs ). They're infiltrators who exploit the church's teachings for their personal passions, for their narrow-mindedness. It's one of the corruptions of the church, isn't it? Those closed ideologies—deep down, all those people have an internal drama, a great inner conflict, and they live to condemn others because they don't know how to ask forgiveness for their own sins. Generally, one of these condemners is inconsistent; they have something inside, so they find release by condemning others, when they should bow their head and look at their own guilt. But the day the church loses its universality—blind, deaf, lame, good, bad, everyone—it ceases to be the church. Everyone has a place.
On “Gender Ideology”
During interviews he gave in recent years, Pope Francis referred to the transfeminist agenda as "gender ideology".
One of those occasions was in an interview with journalist Elisabetta Piqué in the newspaper La Nación . “I always distinguish between pastoral care for people with diverse sexual orientations and gender ideology. They are two different things. Gender ideology, at this moment, is one of the most dangerous forms of ideological colonization,” he stated.
In that same interview, when asked about the binary ID card system in Argentina, he said, “There are some naive people who believe it’s the path to progress and don’t distinguish between respect for sexual diversity or diverse sexual orientations and what is already a gender anthropology, which is extremely dangerous because it erases differences, and that erases humanity.”
A year after that interview, in March 2024, Pope Francis received in audience the participants in the conference “Man-Woman Image of God. For an Anthropology of Vocations,” promoted by the Center for Research and Anthropology of Vocations. There, his text “To Erase Difference Is to Erase Humanity” was presented.
“The ugliest, most ugliest danger is the gender ideology of our time, which erases differences and makes everything the same; to erase difference is to erase humanity. Man and woman, on the other hand, remain in fruitful 'tension'.”
Right to abortion
On several occasions over the years, he has associated abortion with murder. “The Church should not be expected to change its position on this issue. I want to be completely honest about it. This is not a matter subject to supposed reforms or ‘modernization.’ It is not progressive to try to solve problems by eliminating a human life. But it is also true that we have done little to adequately support women in very difficult situations, where abortion is presented to them as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life growing within them has arisen as a consequence of violence or in a context of extreme poverty. Who can fail to understand such painful situations?”
However, since the farewell ceremony of the Catholics for Choice , they have highlighted his gesture in the documentary “Amen, Francis Responds,” when he received a group of young people. “In that group of young people was our colleague Milagros Acosta, a catechist from Santiago del Estero and a member of our organization. It was in that setting that, from her hand, the Pope generously received our symbol of struggle: the green scarf. That simple yet profound gesture represented a moment of recognition, not only for her, but for thousands of us who, from faith and from feminist perspectives, continue fighting for a dignified life for all.”
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