ROME — The Vatican has expunged an LGBTQ+ event from its official Jubilee 2025 calendar, following reports of the occasion from Breitbart News and others.
Italian media reported that the September 6 pilgrimage would be the first-ever specific Jubilee event dedicated to Catholic homosexuals and LGBT people, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts.
Jonathan’s Tent, an Italian pro-LGBTQ+ organization proposing to reconcile “homosexuality and faith,” which sponsored the Jubilee pilgrimage, continues to advertise the event on its website, noting that the Vatican had accepted its request for an official pilgrimage for “LGBT+ believers, their families, and their pastoral workers.”
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the dissident “Catholic” LGBT group New Ways Ministry, said the news that the Vatican has included an LGBTQ+ pilgrimage event during the upcoming Jubilee Year of 2025 “touched my heart deeply.”
While 2025’s event may seem like a small step, DeBernardo writes, “we can see what a sea change has taken place in terms of responding to LGBTQ+ people.”
While a Google search for the event still points to the Vatican Jubilee website, the LGBTQ+ pilgrimage is no longer listed among the official Jubilee events and the link leads instead to a “Page not found” message.
A Google search reveals a now defunct link to the Vatican’s official Jubilee website for the LGBTQ+ pilgrimage event.
Despite its elimination from the Vatican webpage, all indications suggest the event will go on, beginning with a vigil service on September 5, hosted by the Jesuit Church of the Gesù, the burial place of St Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order.
The following day, the LGBTQ+ pilgrims will reportedly pass through the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica, then return to the Gesù Church for a Mass celebrated by Bishop Francesco Savino, the vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.
Conservative Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was ousted from his Texas diocese by Pope Francis in 2023, has urged prayers for the pope’s “conversion” following the news that the Vatican had approved the LGBTQ+ Jubilee 2025 event.
Citing a Breitbart News story, Bishop Strickland exhorted his followers to pray “for Pope Francis’ conversion and for all the souls who are being led into darkness by him and the Cardinals who promote this agenda which contradicts the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
This past weekend, Pope Francis made 21 new cardinals, among whom was the pro-LGBTQ+ Dominican friar Timothy Radcliffe.
Father Radcliffe has been a vocal supporter of progressive causes for decades, often lending his voice to the lobby to rehabilitate gay sex, insisting there is always time for future “evolution” on Catholic moral teaching, which has made him a darling of the LGBT lobby.
Radcliffe has publicly opposed the Church’s ban on admitting men with homosexual tendencies into seminaries to become priests.
In an interview with the London Times in 2005, Radcliffe argued that while “homophobia or misogyny” should be grounds for rejecting a candidate for the priesthood, homosexuality should not.
“I have no doubt that God does call homosexuals to the priesthood, and they are among the most dedicated and impressive priests I have met,” he stated.
In a 2006 address to the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference, Radcliffe called on the Church to “stand with” gay people.
“We must accompany them as they discern what this means, letting our images be stretched open,” he exhorted. “This means watching ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord.”
In 2013, Father Radcliffe argued that gay sex can be “Eucharistic,” expressive of Christ’s self-gift in Holy Communion.
We cannot begin with the question of whether gay sex is permitted or forbidden!, he stated. “We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic.”
“Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways, I would think that it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift,” he said.
“We can also see how it can be expressive of mutual fidelity, a covenantal relationship in which two people bind themselves to each other for ever,” he added.
