More than a thousand LGBT+ Catholics and their relatives make this weekend a pilgrimage to the Vatican in the framework of the “Holy Year”, a first and an “important signal” towards a greater diversity in the Catholic church.
There are more than 1,400 people, from twenty countries, who responded to the invitation of the Italian association La Tenda Di Gionata (the Jonatán store) to participate in the Jubilee of the Church, organized every 25 years.
No private audience with Pope Leo XIV.
While some LGBT+ groups have already come to the Vatican, it is the first time that there is a pilgrimage of this type in the official calendar of the Jubilee Year.
Yveline Behets, transgender woman 68 years old arrived from Brussels, toured 130 km on foot along with about thirty LGBT+ people along the Francigenous road to reach Rome.
The road is a pilgrimage route That begins in England, France crosses, Switzerland and ends in the Plaza de San Pedro in the Vatican.
Given the “relational and cultural difficulties” in the Catholic environment, where it does not always feel “recognized”, Behets expects the Church to grant more space to “plurality.”
“We must not be wrong with the word ‘reception’. We are not foreigners welcomed in an exceptional way (…) we are part of the same family,” he emphasizes, dressed in a white shirt with the characteristic colors of the rainbow.
On Saturday morning, several hundred pilgrims participated in a Mass chaired by the vice president of the Italian Episcopal Conference in the Gesù church, in the center of Rome, after a prayer vigil on Friday marked by testimonies.
Ignorance
Behind A cross with rainbow colorsthe participants walked in the afternoon through the main artery that leads to the Vatican to cross the “holy door” of the imposing Basilica of San Pedro.
“It is a really important sign for us to feel more included” in the Church, it entrusts Hugo, Franco-Quebequés, who prefers not to give his last name for confidentiality reasons.
Wait for this signal to “allow people who are halfway be encouraged to be more cozy with homosexuals within the Church “.
But in a Bimilenaria institution, whose catechism considers homosexual acts as “intrinsically messy”, the road remains long.
“There is fear and a form of ignorance about the life of homosexuals. There are still blockages “, especially for couples, whose” access to the sacraments is in question, “says the 35 -year -old.
From his election in 2013 until his death last April, Pope Francis, fervent defender of a church open to “all, all,” multiplied the gestures of reception towards the LGBT+community, without evolving the doctrine.
Your decision at the end of 2023 to open the possibility of blessings to same -sex couples It caused a strong opposition in the conservative sectors, especially in Africa.
What decision will make your American successoruntil now very discreet on the subject?
For Beatrice Sarti, a 60 -year -old Italian who came to accompany her gay son, “there is still much to do.”
“Our children are no longer going to church because they were felt that they were wrong. That must change,” explains this woman in Bologna, in northern Italy, a member of the Tenda Di Gionata committee.
In 12 years of pontificate, Pope Francis “unfrapped the term homosexuality within the Church and is no longer a bad word. That is a door open to many other evolutions,” Hugo points out.
