Pope Francis and LGBT topics

[9][14] Under his pontificate, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has confirmed that transgender people can be baptised,[15][16] and allowed the blessing of same-sex couples in the document Fiducia supplicans.

[22] Prior to his election as Pope Francis, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio led public opposition to the parliamentary bill on legalising same-sex marriage in Argentina, which was approved by the Argentine Senate on 15 July 2010.

[23] A letter he wrote in that campaign was criticised for using "medieval" and "obscurantist" language,[24][25][26] and was later admitted by an episcopal source to be a strategic error that contributed to the bill's success.

Francis discussed his invitation to meet a transgender Spanish man and his wife as an example of how LGBT people can be welcomed, accompanied, and integrated into the Church.

[35][36] A Vatican spokesperson said that the reference was removed "so as not to distort the Pope's train of thought,[36] and that Francis mentioned psychiatry "to highlight an example of 'things that can be done' [but] didn't mean to say that [homosexuality] was a 'mental illness'".

We have to find a new balance; otherwise, even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.On 3 January 2014, La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine, published a transcript of Francis' comments at a closed-door meeting with 120 superiors-general of worldwide religious orders on 29 November 2013.

[37] Francis emphasised the importance of education in the Church's ministry to children brought up in a multiplicity of household arrangements, and said:[38] I remember the case of a very sad little girl who finally confided to her teacher the reason for her state of mind: 'My mother's girlfriend/fiancée (Italian: fidanzata) doesn't like me.'

We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them.As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio led public opposition to the parliamentary bill on legalising same-sex marriage in Argentina, which was approved by the Argentine Senate on 15 July 2010.

[43] Critics, including Nicolás Alessio, a priest defrocked for supporting the legislation, and Marcelo Fuentes, a senator, called the letter "medieval" and "obscurantist".

[44] Bergoglio also said that there would be "affected children" by same-sex couples with adoption rights: "Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.

[45] In the transcript, Francis mentioned a girl who felt rejected by his mother's lesbian partner, but la fidanzata could mean either a girlfriend or fiancée in Italian.

Franco Coppola, the Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico, later said that the comments referred to Francis' support for civil unions before his election as pope, such that the documentary spliced two different responses together to remove their crucial context.

[53] On 15 September 2021, during a press conference aboard a papal flight returning from his visit to Hungary and Slovakia, Francis said that civil laws can help "those who have a diverse sexual orientation" by offering them "safety, stability, [and] inheritance".

[63][65] In Amoris laetitia (2016), Francis reiterated a 2003 document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said that "[T]here are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family".

[13][66] On 25 September 2023, in a responsum to conservative cardinals before the 16th World Synod of Bishops, Francis signalled the Church's openness to blessings for gay couples as long as they did not misrepresent the Catholic view of marriage as between one man and one woman.

[67][68] On 18 December 2023, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published Fiducia supplicans, a declaration allowing Catholic priests to bless people who are not considered to be married by the Church, including same-sex couples.

[75] On 26 January 2024, addressing the annual plenary assembly of the Dicastery, Francis emphasised that the purpose of the blessings discussed in the document was to "concretely show the closeness of the Lord and the Church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask for help to continue – sometimes to begin – a journey of faith".

[76] In June 2013, a group of Latin American clerics reported that in a private meeting, Francis had acknowledged the existence of a gay lobby in the Vatican, which was advancing its personal interests and leaving the Holy See vulnerable to blackmail.

This one is not good.In the same conference, Francis signalled his openness to clergy who had committed homosexual acts that they later repented,[28][29] distinguishing between "sins from youth" and crimes, such as child sexual abuse.

It's better for them to leave the ministry or the consecrated life rather than to live a double life.On 27 May 2024, during a closed door meeting of the Episcopal Conference of Italy, the Pope used the phase "C'è già troppa frociaggine" when replying to a question about the admittance of gay men as seminarians.

And this [is] terrible!At an audience with the Pontifical Academy for Life on 5 October 2017, Francis condemned "the biological and psychical manipulation of sexual difference, which biomedical technology allows us to perceive as completely available to free choice – which it is not!

[15][16] In September 2015, the Dicastery upheld the refusal of Rafael Zornoza, Bishop of Cádiz and Ceuta, to permit an openly transgender man to be a godfather to his nephew at a baptism.

[91] At a general audience the following month, he said:[92] I ask myself, if the so-called gender theory is not, at the same time, an expression of frustration and resignation, which seeks to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.

In order to resolve the problems in their relationships, men and women need to speak to one another more, listen to each other more, get to know one another better, love one another more.During his 2016 pastoral visit to Georgia and Azerbaijan, Francis told a conference of priests and nuns that teaching gender theory in schools was part of a "global war" against marriage.

[101] On 24 January 2015, Francis met Diego Neria Lejarraga, a Spanish civil servant who stopped attending Mass after his sex change led his parish priest and others to reject him.

The blessing was seen as a sign of acceptance among Italy's LGBT community, prompting an official communication from the Vatican that the letter was not "meant to endorse behaviors and teachings unfit to the Gospel".

[123] Writing in the Toronto Star, columnist Michael Coren described Francis' support as "monumental" and "far more significant than it may seem because the Roman Catholic Church has often been loud and active in opposing the very notion of the trans reality".

[124] On 24 September 2015, during his visit to the United States, Francis held a private meeting with Kim Davis, a county clerk from Kentucky, at Washington D.C.'s Vatican Embassy.

Davis had gained international attention after she defied a federal court order to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples,[20][125] leading to a six-day imprisonment.

[125][21] On the flight returning to Rome, asked about government officials refusing to comply with local laws on marriage licences, Francis told reporters that consicentious objection was a human right.