LGBTQ-Friendly Cardinal Receives Honorary Doctorate; And Other News

Here are some items that might be of interest:

Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe

1.Georgetown University recently presented an honorary doctorate degree to Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, OP.  The Hoya, the student newspaper of the Jesuit school in Washington, DC, noted that the Doctor or Humane Letters degree was given in recognition of Radcliffe’s “advocacy for human rights and disarmament throughout his time as a prelate.” Included in the article were mention of his advocacy in the church for LGBTQ+ people, which was most recently witnessed by his many positive interventions for LGBTQ+ pastoral care when he served as a chaplain for the 2023 and 2024 General Assemblies of the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican.  Previous to these events, Radcliffe already has a strong record of LGBTQ+ welcome in the church.

2. An article on Katholisch.de, recounts the history of the German state taking over the job of registering marriages, instead of churches doing so.  Part of that history includes how the registry offices became the scenes of protests in the 1990s, when “gays and lesbians nationwide wanted to storm the offices and register their marriage certificates – accompanied by a huge media presence.”  Though unsuccessful at that moment, historians note that this campaign “got the ball rolling politically” for the eventual development of domestic partnerships for same-gender couples in 2001, followed by full marriage rights in 2017.

Morbitzer’s painting of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus

3. U.S. Catholic magazine published a profile of the artist Grace Morbitzer, whose paintings include a series of portraits of what she calls “modern saints,” images of traditional Catholic saints, painted as if they were contemporary people living on the margins of society.  In addition to updating the saints’ visual appearances, Morbitzer has included holy people from a variety of diverse backgrounds, including Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, two ancient Roman soldiers who have become patrons for the LGBTQ+ community. Her work can be found on her website: TheModernSaints.com.

4.Pink News,  a UK-based LGBTQ+ online news outlet, has picked up the international story that Pope Francis recently critiqued a theological argument by U.S. Vice President JD Vance about the ordo amoris (“order of love”).Vance, arguing from an “America First” position stated that Catholic theology allowed for a hierarchy of care, i.e., first caring for family, than neighbors, than nation, then others. Pope Francis rebuked this “concentric circles” approach, stating “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”   Pink News quoted David Gibson, the director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, who said that Francis’ critique “takes aim at every single absurd theological claim by JD Vance and his allies in conservative Catholicism (and the Catholic electorate).”

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, February 17, 2025