ROME — Pope Francis has proclaimed a special jubilee pilgrimage for gays and all LGBTQ+ people, Italian media announced this weekend.
For the first time, a specific Jubilee event will be dedicated to Catholic homosexuals and LGBT people, noted the Italian daily, Il Messaggero, despite the Catholic Church considering homosexual acts to be intrinsically disordered.
On September 5, Catholic members of the LGBTQI+ community will be hosted by the Jesuit Church of the Gesù, in central Rome, for a vigil service.
The Jubilee 2025 initiative is sponsored by Jonathan’s Tent, an Italian pro-LGBTQ organization founded in 2018 by Catholic priest Father David Esposito that aims to reconcile “homosexuality and faith.”
The news was welcomed by other LGBT advocacy groups.
“Any initiative aimed at welcoming LGBTQIA+ people and overcoming the obstacles they encounter in fully exercising their rights, including those of a spiritual life, can only be welcomed by us with applause and enthusiasm,” Gabriele Piazzoni, general secretary of Arcigay, said.
Nonetheless, Piazzoni added, Catholics still have a long way to go on issues such as gay rights, abortion, and euthanasia.
“Catholics are still today the most hostile politicians to the exercise of our freedoms, as well as many freedoms related to the dignity of people and self-determination over their bodies, from end-of-life issues to voluntary termination of pregnancy,” he said.
“And these remain facts that are difficult to overcome with a pilgrimage, however welcome and positive in itself,” he said.
Similarly, Rosario Coco, president of Gaynet, suggested that beginning with the Jubilee, “let’s shelve the rhetoric of gender and reach a clear position against conversion practices and the criminalization of homosexuality and trans people around the world.”
“Pope Francis has shown great openness towards homosexual people,” Il Messaggero pointed out, but at the same time, “he has always spoken out clearly against the ‘gay lobbies,’ as well as against the entry into seminaries of boys with this sexual identity.”
It also noted, however, that the pontiff has decried the problem of “faggotry” in some Catholic seminaries, urging bishops to curb the situation.
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