Pope Francis, whose birth name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, died in Rome on April 21, 2025, after suffering a bout of double pneumonia. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on December 17, 1936, making him 88 years old at his passing.
He will be known as a compassionate man, someone who advanced the Catholic Church on many fronts. He often warned of the catastrophic and possibly unalterable effects of human-induced climate change. He was an advocate for the rights of immigrants throughout the world who were fleeing their homelands due to the effects of the climate crisis, wars, gang violence, human trafficking, and poverty.
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He remained steadfast in trying to bring about the end of wars raging in Gaza and the West Bank, in Ukraine, in Darfur, and in conflicted regions worldwide.
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On topics directly effecting LGBTQ+ people, his words and actions — and those of his Church during his 12-year leadership — were mixed at best.
Pope Francis approved blessings of same-sex unions. The new stand of the Catholic Church was issued December 18, 2023, by the Vatican’s office of the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Francis. (The Church also blesses animals and battleships.)
Same-sex unions: A marriage not made in heaven?
While some Catholics saw this move as a “radical” advancement in Church policy, the declaration did not change “the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,” stated Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the office of the Doctrine of the Faith. Fernández pointed out that there is no alteration in the liturgy relating to the marriage sacrament, which bestows marriage only between a man and a woman.
Considering the Catholic Church’s stances against same-sex couples and trans people, how much of a “radical” change was this “blessing”? Even the Vatican’s doctrine-enforcing agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in March of 2021 stated emphatically that Catholic clergy do not have the authority to bless same-sex unions.
Pope Francis opined in an October 2020 documentary film that same-sex couples should have the right to “civil unions,” saying, “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” regarding his approach to pastoral care of Catholics.
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” he added. “I stood up for that.”
Many LGBTQ+ activists like myself refer to “civil unions” as “marriage light” — a form of second-class status.
The Pope has previously made himself quite clear where he stands on “real” and “true” marriage.
In a 2017 book, Politics and Society, the Pope stated, “Marriage between people of the same sex? ‘Marriage’ is a historical word. Always in humanity, and not only within the Church, it’s between a man and a woman… we cannot change that. This is the nature of things. This is how they are. Let’s call them ‘civil unions.’”
In a 2014 interview published in the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, the pontiff suggested the Catholic Church could tolerate some types of same-sex civil unions as a practical measure to guarantee property rights and health care.
Contrary to his previous views, the Pope changed his mind on civil unions.
Gay priests: Keeping the faith?
As a relatively new Pope, at an impromptu news conference aboard his papal jet on July 29, 2013 — as he returned to the Vatican from Brazil after completing his first international trip where he spoke to millions celebrating “World Youth Day” — he responded to a question about gay priests.
He stated, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
Who indeed! But either he lied at the time or he was being ironic because he has negatively judged LGBTQ+ people virtually throughout his tenure.
A Vatican statement dated December 8, 2016 on the ordination of priests, “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation,” states, “[T]he Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to seminary or holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”
Is this really his impression of “profound respect”? Is that not anything but a toxic judgement? Is this not a fortification of an already existing condemnation?
Transgender people: Made in God’s image?
During his visit to Poland in the summer of 2016, Pope Francis denounced trans people as the “annihilation of man.” He said, “Today, in schools they are teaching this to children – to children! – that everyone can choose their gender.” He blamed what he called the “ideological colonizing” of gender backed by “very influential countries.”
Previously, the Vatican hierarchy locked out Alex Salinas, a 21-year-old transman from Cadiz, Spain, by informing him that it had denied his request to become the godparent of his nephew because being transgender is incongruent with Catholic teaching.
The Vatican said that transgender status “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own sexuality. Therefore, it is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother.”
The Vatican also asserted that there is “no discrimination toward [Salinas], but only the recognition of an objective lack of the requirements, which by their nature are necessary to assume the ecclesial responsibility of being a godfather.”
But the Church’s doctrinal office somewhat altered its previous stands on transgender Catholics in November 2023 stating that under particular circumstances, they may receive baptism and serve as godparents “even if they have undergone hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery…”
This decision came with the condition – which is not fully explained or defined and seems only to relate to trans Catholics – “if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating a public scandal or confusion among the faithful.”
Homosexuality: An abomination unto the Lord?
Regarding same-sex sexuality, Pope Francis not merely supports but publicly buttresses a wall of separation.
The Roman Catholic Church’s Catechism 2357 states, “Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are gravely disordered. They are contrary to natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of love [i.e., children]. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
“Gravely disordered” in this passage refers to acting on same-sex desires with another person while not necessarily applying to the person or people involved: the old “we hate the sin but love the sinner” slight-of-hand.
For individuals within the Church who cannot or will not change to a heterosexual orientation, limited tolerance will be shown, since Roman Catholic Church Catechism 2359 states, “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”
Trans surgeries: Playing God?
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita” in 2024. It was a 20-page document declaring “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities.
“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God….Gender theory [denies] the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
In a section on “Sex Change,” the declaration asserts that gender-affirming care “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” However, it endorses surgical intervention for intersex people, which it describes as people “with genital abnormalities.”
This position stands opposed to intersex advocates who dispute the need for surgical procedures, which force them into the tyranny of a hegemonic sex binary.
Same-sex families: Blessed by the church?
Pope Francis, at a Vatican conference on so-called “traditional marriage” in November 2014, argued that marriage is between a man and a woman and that “[t]his complementarity is at the root of marriage and family.”
He added that this union between a man and a woman is “an anthropological fact…that cannot be qualified based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history.”
He also asserted in 2014, “Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”
Francis reinforced his Church-imposed wall in front of more than 1,000 families in the Philippines during a 2015 trip when he warned, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”
These forces — including same-sex marriage — are attempting the “ideological colonization of the family,” he said.
The Pope demeaned LGBTQ+ people at another weekly Vatican audience when he gave his unqualified blessing to a Slovakian referendum outlawing same-sex unions and adoption rights for same-sex couples.
He proclaimed, “I greet the pilgrims from Slovakia and, through them, I wish to express my appreciation to the entire Slovak church, encouraging everyone to continue their efforts in defense of the family, the vital cell of society.”
As for surrogacy, the Church claims that the practice violates a child’s “right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and “also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” because she “is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
If queer existence is a sin, what then?
So El Papa had hardened and extended the already unfathomable Catholic walls by denying LGBTQ+ people (his “children”) the rights of full marriage, civil unions, and adoption and to their sexuality and gender identities and expressions; denying them the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of legalized partnerships and families; continues to prohibit them from the priesthood, and denying them the right to be named and serve as godparents.
Does his Church “blessing” of same-sex couples send a positive message, a statement of intransigence of Church dogma, or can it be seen as something more cynical?
Can it be merely Pope Francis’ attempt to attract more Catholic conservatives into increasingly emptied pews and to donate desperately needed funds into dwindling Church coffers after paying out millions – including public tax dollars from the recent U.S. Coronavirus stimulus payments — to victims of priestly sexual abuse?
While some may call the Pope’s denial of marriage and civil unions as reinscribing “traditional” Church teaching, its meaning is clearly to keep the religious institution entrenched in the 15th-century where it has remained frozen.
Francis and his Church have restrained the human and civil rights of LGBTQ+ people. The Catholic Church constructs barriers while speaking in doublespeak saying, “We love you,” “We welcome you,” Wwe offer you ‘Christian love,’” and “We are here to help you change your unwanted attractions and gender identities and expressions,” which we, by the way, construct as “gravely and intrinsically disordered” and incongruent with Catholic teaching.
Is denying any individual their subjectivity and agency really true love? Or is it, rather, cruelty, discrimination, and, yes, abuse and oppression?
All we have to look forward to from the Catholic Church is the same ol’ same ol’ barriers for probably the next millennium or so. But by then, humanity will overpopulate itself into extinction through the Church’s ban on contraceptives and denial of women’s reproductive freedoms.
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