When I woke up on April 21st to the news of Pope Francis’ death, I was stunned. Even though his health had been declining for the past few months, I still had the hope that he would stay with us for a few more years. The loss struck me not only because he was the head of my Church, but because, as a queer catholic, his outreach to the LGBTQIA+ community made me feel part of the Catholic Church again. Queer and Catholic have felt like immiscible adjectives for most of my life. And for most of the Catholic Church’s history, the Church has wanted all the queer to disappear- from the medieval sentences for “sodomitical crime” to Pope St. John Paul II’s Catechism (1992) that still judged same-sex relationships as “intrinsically disordered.” Pope Francis’ outreach was revolutionary, part of me believes that he didn’t do enough, and despite my sad feelings for his loss, I still struggle to forgive him.
Since the start of his papacy in 2013, progressive change seemed to be on its way. Through small actions such as refraining from wearing a golden cross, wearing his casual black worn shoes, and forgoing the option to live in the luxurious papal apartment, Pope Francis broke with centuries of tradition slowly but steadily. However, when he famously responded, “Who am I to judge?” regarding gay catholics, his response shook the world. No previous pope had ever spoken openly and non-judgmentally about the LGBTQIA+ community. He echoed that trajectory in 2020 by endorsing civil-union laws for gay couples in the documentary Francesco, arguing that “[gay] people have the right to be in a family.” In January 2023, Pope Francis condemned the criminalization of queer relationships by saying that “being homosexual isn’t a crime.” In August, during World Youth Day, he emphasized that “there is room for everyone in the church.” In November of that same year, the Vatican quietly affirmed that transgender Catholics may be baptized and act as godparents or wedding witnesses. And in December, he oversaw the publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which was the first church document that allowed blessings to gay couples. As a pontiff, Francis has also amplified bridge-builders such as Jesuit Fr James Martin, meeting with him privately and praising ministries that welcome the LGBTQIA+ community, and he was even planning to include a pilgrimage for LGBTQIA+ Catholics during the Jubilee year of 2025.
Yet Francis’ bridge-building with the LGBTQIA+ community stands in tension with remarks and doctrine that still make some of us feel unwelcome. Back in 2015, he warned that “gender theory […] does not recognize the order of creation,” comparing it with nuclear arms and genetic manipulation. In 2018, he told a Spanish missionary that homosexuality had become “fashionable” in today’s society, and that it was “a very serious issue” in seminaries, urging clergy to strike openly gay candidates’ applications. Three years later he approved the Responsum ad dubium, which declared that queer relationships were “not ordered to the Creator’s plan.” In Dignitas Infinita, published in April 2024, he lumped again over “gender theory” and “sex-change” as “grave threats to human dignity,” comparing them to the damage of war. And just a month afterward, news leaked that in a closed meeting with Italian bishops, he had used derogatory slurs when urging caution about gay seminarians. Each of those remarks dredged up painful memories of my past. In my Catholic high school in Madrid, Spain, a teacher blamed the Church’s sexual abuse scandal on “homosexual impulses,” another insisted “Same-Sex Attraction” could be prayed away, and a scandal arose because of a censored schoolbook picture containing a pride flag. All these acted as unspoken lessons that queer students had no place in the community. And when I came out, bonds were indeed broken with the community. I was forced to resign as a head altar boy in Spain because parents supposedly couldn’t “trust” an openly gay teenager with their children; even now, I worry some parishes might deny me Communion. So when Francis echoes terms like “same-sex attraction,” warns against “gender theory,” or brands queerness a grave moral threat, it feels as though those stigmas I have lived with during my teenage years are stamped with papal approval.
His outreach gives me hope, yet each of his controversial addresses reminds me that my place in the Church can still disappear overnight, especially in this moment of uncertainty. Even so, I believe Francis was the pope LGBTQIA+ Catholics—or even the whole Church—needed. Even though his outreach to the LGBTQIA+ community has many limitations, it has still caused scandal within the most conservative fringes of the Catholic Church. Yet Pope Francis has never stopped pushing the Catholic Church to become more inclusive. As the Conclave opens on May 7, I hope his successor remembers the bridges he built and pushes them farther, not back. Francis’ many missteps should stand as cautionary markers, but his breakthroughs—“Who am I to judge?”, condemnations of criminalization, Fiducia Supplicans—have already widened the path toward a more inclusive Church. If his successors carry the lessons, coming from his triumphs and mistakes forward, his imperfect legacy could become the cornerstone of genuine, enduring inclusion in the Catholic Church.
