Sister Jeannine Gramick Describes Her Meeting With Pope Francis

You have probably read some stories about my recent meeting with Pope Francis, but I’d like to share some more facts and feelings.

As New Ways Ministry’s Frank DeBernardo, Bob Shine, Matt Myers, and I arrived at Casa Santa Marta on October 17, we were ushered into a small reception room. When Pope Francis arrived, I hugged him and told him how happy I was to meet my pen pal. I spoke to him about the work that so many U.S. Catholics are doing to advance LGBTQ+ ministry in the church and about the current projects of New Ways Ministry.

I thanked Pope Francis for welcoming the transgender people who live in Rome to come to the Vatican and for corresponding with some of them. When I thanked Pope Francis for publicly condemning LGBTQ+ criminalization laws, he remarked that many LGBTQ+ people around the world are being put to death and that the Church in many countries is not speaking out against this. I also thanked him for his openness to blessing same-gender unions.

Pope Francis asked about “my story.” I told him about meeting a gay man when I was a graduate student and the subsequent assignment for more than 20 years by the School Sisters of Notre Dame to pastoral ministry for LGBTQ+ people. I acknowledged that the Vatican’s disapproval was a difficult time in my life, and that I had to relocate to another religious community, the Sisters of Loretto, but that I had received much support, particularly from U.S. women religious. Pope Francis said that we must never give up hope, and offered a quotation from St. Paul: “Hope does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5).

Meeting Pope Francis was one of the clearest signs to me that hope does not disappoint. Since I was a child, I have been waiting, praying, and hoping that God would send our church a leader like him. I have loved Pope Francis since he was elected in 2013. From all that I read about him, I know he is a man of prayer. We are so blessed to have such a pastor–someone who truly walks in the shoes of the fisherman–to lead our Church.

Our meeting allowed me to see first-hand many of the qualities that I have observed from afar in the past ten years of his papacy. Pope Francis is humble. I sensed his humility on the day he was elected when he asked the crowd in St. Peter’s Square to bless him. He knew the power of the church is in its people, not its hierarchy or institutions. I witnessed his humility again when he was asked to describe himself in the first interview he gave as pope; as he answered, his first words were, “I am a sinner.” And I saw that humility in our meeting when, instead of giving a lecture or homily or speak a lot, he wanted mainly to listen, to hear about the work of LGBTQ+ ministry, and about the opposition that we all sometimes face.

Our meeting also confirmed for me that Pope Francis is a person of deep prayer. His remarks frequently centered on prayer. Several times he asked for prayers, an admission of his vulnerability and of his need for support and guidance. Prayer for him is not a somber and serious activity, but a time for joy and laughter.

He encouraged us to maintain a sense of humor in everything we do. When I told him that I thought he was the face of a loving God to so many people, he joked back, “God’s face is not this ugly!”  He asked us if we knew a prayer attributed to St. Thomas More which, he said, he prays every day. It is a plea to God to provide a sense of good humor as a way to get through life’s challenges. When we said we didn’t know it, he gave us each a copy of his Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, on the “Call to Holiness in Today’s World,” which contains the prayer. I now pray it daily. The following is the text of the prayer:

“Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humour to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called ‘I’. Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others.” [Gaudete e Exsultate, Section 126, footnote 101]

Pope Francis also gave me a rosary with beautiful pearl beads and a gold medallion of the Virgin and Child. Pope Francis has a special devotion to Our Lady and always ends his notes to me by praying that the Holy Virgin will take care of me. When we posed for a photo with him, he wanted it to be in front of a painting of Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, a favorite devotion of his.

I gave him a copy of A Home for All: A Catholic Call for LGBTQ+ Non-Discrimination by Frank DeBernardo and Bob Shine. I also gave him a copy of Frank’s new book, New Ways and Next Steps: Developing Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry. And then we presented him with two ornaments made by Mary DeBernardo, Frank’s sister. Each is a plush, round Christmas ball. One has the New Ways Ministry logo embroidered on it; the other, a rainbow cross. I told him to put them on his Christmas tree and he smiled and nodded.

We know that Pope Francis is concerned about LGBTQ+ people. I believe this concern springs from his firm belief that God loves ALL people–everyone, no exceptions. He believes that no one should be turned away from the church. This concern came out when he said that he gets upset by priests who chastise people during the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That time should be a time of welcome and embrace, not punishment, he said. He emphasized that is why the image on his papal cross is of a shepherd carrying a lost sheep on his shoulders.

When Frank, Bob, Matt, and I chatted after the meeting, we all felt that we did not enter the meeting with the pope alone. We were bringing into the room all of the countless LGBTQ+ people we have met over the decades in our ministries. We also brought the thousands of parents, family members, pastoral ministers, friends and supporters who have worked tirelessly for LGBTQ+ equality for so long. In a special way, I know that Fr. Robert Nugent, the deceased co-founder of New Ways Ministry, was also in the room with us.

This was not a culmination of the ministry we have all been involved in because the ministry still continues. Meeting with Pope Francis was an answer to my prayer that there would be a dialogue between LGBTQ+ people and the highest leaders of the Catholic Church. In this meeting, as well as in the Synod our church is currently undergoing, Pope Francis has inaugurated that dialogue. It’s now up to all of us to continue pursuing and engaging in that dialogue in whatever way we can–and especially, as Pope Francis showed us, through hope, humor, and prayer.

—Sister Jeannine Gramick, New Ways Ministry, October 25, 2023