Despite Judicial Losses, LGBTQ+ Ministry Keeps Progressing in Mexico

Members of Sagrada Familia parish’s choir at LGBTQ+ welcoming Masses

Catholic LGBTQ+ news was once much less frequent, but these days, it is hard to keep up with it all! This week, Bondings 2.0 is publishing stories from this summer (or winter for our Southern hemisphere readers) that have not yet been covered, but are notable and worthwhile covering in detail. Today’s post includes news from Mexico.

A Mexican civil court has ruled against a transgender Catholic who sued the local diocese over a request to change their sex designation in church records. This ruling, however, does not detract from recent progress in Mexico on the part of LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The lawsuit against the Diocese of Querétaro was filed by an unnamed trans woman in 2021, who had asked church officials to update the sex designation on her baptismal record from male to female. The request was denied, leading to the judicial battle that ended with this latest ruling. Catolin reported (via Google Translate):

“Faced with the Church’s refusal, the complainant went to Mexico’s National Data Protection Institute (INAI), a federal agency in charge of adjudicating claims of data protection violations, which issued an order requiring the Diocese of Querétaro to carry out the requested change. The diocese challenged this decision with the legal support of ADF International, and the INAI decision was annulled by a Federal District Court.

“The dispute was raised to the Federal Collegiate Court of Appeal of the twenty-second circuit of Mexico, where the final decision was made in favor of the Diocese of Querétaro. The case reached the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the highest federal body of justice in Mexico, which refused to take the case, stating that it had already given sufficient guidelines within its jurisprudence to resolve the matter.”

Because the initial refusal from Catholic officials was due to church teaching, the legal case became focused on religious liberty. The diocese’s representative in court, ADF International, is an affiliate of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom which has led efforts in the U.S. to undo LGBTQ+ protections and expand religious entities’ right to discriminate. Catolin noted that questions of transgender identities and church records have begun appearing in several Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. In Argentina, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Archdiocese of Salta which had also denied a trans person’s request for changes.

In related news, this July, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Querétaro, Martín Lara Becerril, was acquitted of charges he had discriminated against and used hate speech towards LGBTQ+ people. According to Diario de Querétaro (via Google Translate), a regional administrative court found that Becerril had not incited harm through his words. Previously, in 2022, the spokesperson had said the diocese did not support a Pride March and encouraged it to be “peaceful. . .without affecting third parties, without vandalism,” respectful of a Mexico where “we are all free to live,” including religious communities with differing beliefs.

These judicial losses contrast with the greatly-expanded pastoral efforts of Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates in Mexico, including some church leaders. AFP highlighted this path to inclusion in a report earlier this year, which included stories of gay Catholics and the welcoming Masses they participate in at Mexico City’s Sagrada Familia parish.

Shortly after the December release of Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican document allowing blessings for same-gender relationships, two couples were blessed at Sagrada Familia. The report continues:

“‘It was a miracle from God. We’re very Catholic. I never thought that a church would accept me with my partner, my sexuality,’ said Arturo Manjarrez, accompanied by his husband Carlos Sanchez. . .

“There was already a choir made up of young members of the LGBTQ community who had left the seminary and used to meet to pray in a house, said choir director Eduardo Andrade. . .

“The choir’s members include Regina, a teacher who identifies as non-binary and remembers attending the mass for the first time dressed more like a straight person.

“‘They said to me, “where’s the outfit, where’s the makeup?” And when I entered, I saw that it was totally different. I reconciled with the Church,’ Regina said, wearing makeup and holding a fan.”

The caskets of nonbinary advocate Jesús Ociel Baena and their partner, Dorian Herrera, at a funeral in November 2023

Fr. Gonzalo Rosas, SJ, who has helped lead that community for over ten years, said that when he arrived at the parish, there was a lot of sexual diversity. His outreach efforts led many young people telling them about how the church was exclusionary, to which the priest replied, “I invited them to see what path we could take together and the idea of a mass arose.”

Rosas continued the Masses with support from his superiors, though they warned against “politicizing” the liturgy. Inclusive Masses are now held in three other Mexico City churches.

One more example of the progress came in late 2023 at the funeral of Jesús Ociel Baena, a prominent nonbinary advocate and magistrate judge, who was allegedly murdered alongside their partner, Dorian Herrera, that year. At the funeral, held in the Diocese of Aguascalientes’s cathedral, the two caskets were draped in rainbow flags.

Facing criticism, Archbishop Gustavo Rodríguez Vega of Yucatán,  vice president of the Episcopal Conference of Mexico, defended the funeral and the flags by saying “there is no problem” because “we could not, in any way, not receive them in the church,” and “if they place those flags, which meant so much to them, well, we respect that.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, August 13, 2024