Ahead of the Pope's scheduled September visit to the United States, a group of LGBT Americans have sent His Holiness a letter asking him to meet with them and their family members to "promote great healing and reconciliation in our Church and society."
Lui Akira Francesco Matsuo said he was standing in line for communion one Sunday at his Roman Catholic church in Detroit when a fellow parishioner pulled him aside: Didn’t he know that the archbishop had just urged supporters of same-sex marriage not to take communion?
Mr. Matsuo, who is transgender, left and never returned to his parish.
Matsuo is one of the signers of the letter.
I want him to extend his hand openly, especially to the transgender community. I am a practicing Catholic. I just don’t have a parish I can call home.
--Mr. Matsuo, who is 28 and said he has identified as male ever since he was a toddler
In a formal letter sent to Pope Francis at the Vatican, groups representing gay and transgender people, Catholics, and Hispanics said the church in America was in the midst of a “pastoral crisis” over gay issues and asked to meet with him while he was in the United States. While some American conservatives are eager to see Pope Francis make use of his popularity on this trip to advance the fight against abortion and same-sex marriage, gay Catholics want him to acknowledge their rejection by the church, and to welcome them as full members with equal access to sacraments like baptism and marriage.
We see so many people we love abandoning the church because of the kinds of indignities and pain that they’re subjected to, whether it’s being denied a kid’s baptism or hearing a priest make horrible comments during a homily.
Everybody’s got stories of pain and alienation, and those things do real harm to people. And it needs to end.
--Marianne Duddy-Burke, DignityUSA
While some parishes welcome same-sex couples and march in gay pride parades, some priests in other parishes refuse to baptize the children of same-sex couples or to give communion to openly gay mourners at their parents’ funeral Masses. Dozens of Catholic schools have fired openly gay teachers — most recently a priest working at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and a director of religious education in a private academy outside Philadelphia — only to face revolts from Catholic students and parents.
[T]he pope has the opportunity to change that narrative, and to bring people and the church along with him.
That is a really powerful platform, and would save actual lives.
--Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD
In his first year, he shocked the world with his comment, “Who am I to judge?” uttered in response to a question during an airborne news conference about his attitude toward a celibate gay priest serving in the Vatican. In doing so, he appeared to jettison the punishing tone used by his predecessors, including Benedict XVI, who called homosexuality an “objective disorder,” phrasing from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
On a visit to the Philippines in January, Pope Francis said in a speech that “the family is threatened by growing efforts” to “redefine the very institution of marriage.” He also criticized wealthy Western countries for imposing their ideas about gender on developing countries, calling it “ideological colonization.”
A month later, he was quoted in a book saying that “gender theory,” which holds that gender is a social construct, is one of the great modern dangers to humanity, like nuclear weapons.
For Mr. Matso, a transgender Catholic who grew up in the Nagasaki area, that remark was way over the line.
Knowing what nuclear weapons did, and him comparing it to gender theory, he lost my trust.
--Matsuo