In the eyes of many LGBTQ Catholics, the late Pope Francis created a “seismic change” toward acceptance. Now, as the world receives the newly -elected Papa Leo XIV, these faithful lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender and queer say they hope he will continue to move in the same direction.
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the Catholic law group LGBTQ Dignityusa, was in Rome on Thursday when Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old native of Chicago, who holds American and Peruvian citizenship, became the new pontiff.
“In fact, I was quite excited to see that Cardinal Prevost had been elected as Pope Leo XIV and thrilled that he took the name of a rooted pope in social justice. I think a clear sign for a wounded world that is where his energy will be focused,” she told NBC News in an interview on Friday. “I also found a lot of hope in his porch remarks … where he spoke about God’s comprehensive love without any condition, and where he spoke about being a church for all the people of God.”
Jason Steidl Jack, a gay Catholic and assistant professor of teaching religious studies at the University of St. Joseph, New York, described his reaction to Pope Leo’s election, the first American to lead the Holy See as “cautiously optimistic.”
“I see him continuing the legacy of Pope Francis, especially dialogue and sinodality,” said Steidl Jack, describing sinodality as “this idea of traveling together” and “listening to each other.” However, he said the election of the new Pope “does not relieve all the fears I have as Catholic LGBTQ”.
“Church teaching, even under Pope Francis, remains incredibly homophobic, and the church continues to invent new ways of being transphobic, as it really avoids learning about trans people and their experiences,” he said, adding, however, that the new pontiff seems “open to dialogue and inclusion,” considering his observations in Thursday.
Chicago resident Greg Krajewski said he has been a practitioner all his life and sings in his local parish every Sunday. However, he said, as a gay man, he is “careful with whom I talk to and how I introduce myself.”
“There are some things in his opening speech that he really gave me a lot of hope,” he said about Leo. “The first thing is that he said a few times, ‘God loves us without limits or conditions.’ I think this is a great indication that even if he himself has more reservations on LGBTQ issues in the church, he is open to these discussions.
Record of tracking on LGBTQ issues
Leo’s previous comments on LGBTQ issues are limited, although several LGBTQ Catholics expressed concern about the observations he would have made in a speech to church leaders for over a decade. During the 2012 Bishops Synod, the then Father Prevost lamented the challenges presented to the Catholic Church due to portraits of the sympathetic media of “alternative families.”
“Note, for example, how alternative families composed of homosexual partners and their adoptive children are benign and friendly portrayed on television and film programs,” he told a group of bishops at the time, according to the Catholic news service. “The sympathy for anti -Christian lifestyle choices that mass media promotes is so bright and artistically rooted in the public that when people hear the Christian message, often seems inevitably ideological and emotionally cruel because of contrast to the ostensible humanity of anti -Christian perspective.”
Francis Debernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, who works to promote LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church, called the comments “disappointing.”
“We prayed that in the 13 years that passed, 12 of which were under Pope Francis’ papacy, that his heart and mind have developed more progressively on LGBTQ+problems, and we will have an attitude of waiting to see if this happened,” Debernardo said in a statement.
Steidl Jack said Leo seemed to have a “cultural warrior mindset” at same -sex marriage and LGBTQ representation in pop culture in 2012, but expressed hope that the new Pope’s opinions have changed ever since.
“Much of the world has changed since 2012 – even Pope Francis has changed a lot throughout his pontificate,” he said. “So I hope Pope Leo is listening to LGBTQ Catholics. I hope he is paying attention and growing, just like Pope Francis, just as the rest of the world has been.”
Visions on LGBTQ issues have changed dramatically over the past decade, including the views of Catholics practice. For example, the PEW Research Center’s 2023-24 Study 2023-24, which found that 19% of US adults identify themselves as Catholics, found that 70% of Catholics favor that same-sex couples marry 57% in 2014.
Michael O’Loughlin, Outreach Executive Director, a LGBTQ Catholic organization, was in Rome for the announcement of the new Pope. He said the 2012 comments were disappointing, but he was keeping his mind open.
“I am willing to look at your broader message, which was peace and defend the marginalized,” he said. “The fact that he moved to Spanish to approach his former community in Peru, I thought it was a good sign that he is a man of the people.”
After 2012, the subsequent observations of the future Pope on LGBTQ issues are scarce.
In 2017, when he was bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, and a gateway to the Peruvian episcopal conference, he seemed to talk against “gender ideology,” a term some people use to refer to transgender identities, telling local media that this ideology “seeks to eliminate biological differences between men and women”.
Then, in 2024, a year after Pope Francis’ formally approval, allowing Catholic priests to bless same -sex couples, the then Cardinal Prevost said that the subsequent reaction of bishops in Africa highlighted the need to provide more doctrinal authority to local bishops, according to CBCNews, the news service of the Catholic Conference of Bishops’ of films’.
“Bishops in the episcopal conferences of Africa were basically saying that here in Africa, all our cultural reality is very different. … I was not rejecting the teaching authority of Rome, it was saying that our cultural situation is such that the application of this document will not work,” PREVOST said at the time, according to CBCPNews. “You must remember that there are still places in Africa that apply the death penalty, for example, for people who live in a homosexual relationship. … So we are in very different worlds.”
Hopes for the future
When asked what she would like to see from Leo’s papacy, Duddy-Burke said he expects him to serve a “reliable moral voice.”
“The world is so broken at the moment in so many places – you know, this rise of nationalism, the increase of xenophobia, so many wars that are very cruel happening around the world – I just hope it can become a very clear and reliable moral voice in the world, and part of it means dealing with inqualities and failures in our own church too,” she said.
Steidl Jack said he expects Leo to listen to Catholics with different points of view.
“One of the gifts of Pope Francis’ papacy was that he encouraged church leaders to leave the church, listening to people outside the hierarchy, and that is what Pope Leo needs to do, especially in relation to same -sex relationships and transgender experience,” he said.
Debernardo of the New Ways Ministry said in his statement that he expects Leo to continue to develop the foundation Francis exposed.
“Pope Francis opened the door for a new approach to LGBTQ+people,” he said. “Pope Leo should now guide the church through that door.”