How Are Synod Assembly Participants on LGBTQ+ Issues? — Part III

Today’s post concludes our series highlighting some of the more LGBTQ-positive participants in this October’s assembly for the Synod on Synodality, as the process is informally known.  You can find the first two parts of this three-part series here and here.

Normally, when we have covered the LGBTQ+ records of Synod participants in the past, it has been all bishops, and this is mostly true again. Today’s post is particularly exciting, however, because it features non-bishop members. For the first time in modern Synod history, lay people, vowed religious, and clergy will be included as voting members, including women. The participants highlighted today include such voting members, as well as non-voting participants who will support the assembly in various roles. These participants are included in New Ways Ministry’s resource documenting the LGBTQ-related records of Synod assembly participants, which is available here.

A note before proceeding. The inclusion of non-bishops posed an additional challenge in compiling our list. Bondings 2.0 has nearly 12 years of archival coverage about major church leaders from which we gleaned information. But the lay people, religious, and clergy are often less prominent—think a college student versus a leading cardinal—and as such, their involvement with LGBTQ+ issues is not as public or known. The participants in today’s post, for the most part, are high profile. But other individuals who have been named as synod assembly participants may also be involved with LGBTQ+ ministry, have LGBTQ+ loved ones, or believe in LGBTQ+ inclusion as a principle.

If you know anything about other participants who have not been featured in this series of posts, please let us know about them. If you have further updates to a participant already on the list, please contact us, too.  Send information to: [email protected].

Below are five non-bishop participants for the 2023 assembly of the Synod who have LGBTQ-positive records.

Sister Nathalie Becquart, X.M.C.J., Undersecretary, General Secretariat of the Synod (Vatican City)

In 2022, Becquart made history as the first Vatican official to address an audience of LGBTQ+ and ally Catholics when New Ways Ministry hosted a webinar for her to talk about “Synodality: A Path of Reconciliation.” More than 1,000 people from 37 countries registered for the event. Becquart acknowledged that a divide existed between many LGBTQ+ people and the institutional church, but, she said, “with the Holy Spirit, we can find ways of reconciliation..if we truly believe it is the church of Christ, we are the body of Christ.”

Thierry Bonaventura, Communications Manager, General Secretariat of the Synod (Vatican City)

In May 2022, Bonaventura wrote the introduction to the Synod office’s newsletter that month, which focused on LGBTQ+ people in the synodal process, and included stories about queer couples. Bonaventura used the “metaphor of the frontier” to explain that where the church should have built bridges, it at times erected walls. He added that “our attitudes toward these ecclesial communities [LGBTQ+ people] has too often been marked by emphasizing difference and erecting barriers, rather than bearing witness to the merciful love of Jesus who makes no distinction between his disciples.” In 2021, Bonaventura apologized to LGBTQ+ people after a New Ways Ministry webinar was removed from a website of resources for the Synod. The webinar was later re-posted.

Father Philippe Bordeyne, President, Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences (Italy)

In 2021, Bordeyne published an academic essay arguing that, in view of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, blessings for same-gender couples should be considered, though in a private form that is not conflated with marriage. Since becoming president of the Institute, which Pope Francis re-organized entirely, Bordeyne has also said the church “must be more humble before the mystery of the family” because the church “has not always been humble enough to recognize that there are important changes in the way families are formed.” He added, “We theologians cannot continue to assert certainties about the family when we see the transformations it is undergoing today.” Bordeyne works for Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who has made gay-positive comments.

Father James Martin, S.J., author of Building a Bridge and editor at America Media (United States)

Martin is well-known for his LGBTQ+ ministry. He has been received in audience by Pope Francis three times as a show of support for the priest’s work. A number of other church leaders have voiced support for his work, too, pushing back against conservative criticisms and boycotts. In 2016, Martin was given New Ways Ministry’s Bridge Building Award, which honored the priest’s inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in his ministry as a writer and social media figure. His address upon receiving the award was developed into a book, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, a second edition of which has since been published, and translated into many languages. In 2018, he was invited by the Vatican to speak on LGBTQ+ pastoral inclusion at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. In 2016, Martin said that respecting transgender people was a “fairly simple thing to do.” In 2020, he launched a series of Outreach conferences on Catholic LGBTQ+ issues, as well as a related website from America Media in 2022.

Julia Oseka, student, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia  (United States)

In 2022, Oseka advocated for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and expanded roles for women in the church during a synodal gathering. Oseka, who identifies as feminist, helped organize some of the first synodal conversations on her campus, and eventually participated in synodal meetings of Philadelphia-area Catholic colleges, where LGBTQ+ inclusion was among the strongest themes. Originally from Poland, Oseka had  Archbishop Nelson Perez’s personal support for helping the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s synod process. She later represented the archdiocese at the North American Continental meetings in 2022. Her college major areas are religious studies and physics.

Father Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., former Master of the Dominican Order (England)

Radcliffe has an LGBTQ+ record dating to the 1990s. In 2016, Radcliffe said Catholics should focus less on what others were “doing in bed” and more on helping people find God along their own path, though he also objected to marriage equality. In 2014, conservative Catholics boycotted a conference at which he spoke because of the priest’s LGBTQ+ pastoral work. Radcliffe responded with these words about same-gender love: “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.” In 2013, he wrote an essay about “A New Way of Being Church” in view of Pope Francis’ leadership. Suggesting the pope had opened up a new path on LGBTQ+ issues, Radcliffe commented, “If we dare to really see people, in their dignity and humanity, then we shall discover the right words to say. Who knows where this will take us?” In 2006, Radcliffe called on the church to “stand with” gay people by “letting our images be stretched,” which means, “watching ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord.” In 2005, Radcliffe defended gay priests after a Vatican instruction barring gay men from entering seminary was released, saying, “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.”

You can find the full list of Synod assembly participants by clicking here. For the first post in this series, click here. For the second post in this series, click here. 

For the blog’s full coverage of the Synod on Synodality, click here. For all of New Ways Ministry’s resources on the Synod, including Sister Nathalie Becquart’s historic address to LGBTQ+ and ally Catholics, click here. 

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, July 14, 2023