A Courageous and Compassionate Cardinal Retires

Cardinal Oswald Gracias

Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, India, who has been a been courageous and outspoken supporters of LGBTQ+ issues, is stepping down after serving the archdiocese and the larger church of India since 2006.

Here are some highlights from his record:

2013: He called on his priests to speak more sensitively about LGBTQ+ people.

2013: He was an original member of Pope Francis’ advisory Council of Cardinals, and his term was renewed in 2023.

2013: He was the only religious leader in India to oppose the recriminalization of homosexuality.

2014:  In answer to a question if lesbian/gay people were welcome in the Catholic Church, he responded: “The answer is an unequivocal yes. Of course they’re welcome.”

2014: He met to discuss LGBTQ+ pastoral care with Ruby Almeida, an India-born UK Catholic lesbian woman.

2015: As Archbishop of Bombay, he called for the decriminalization of homosexuality; In 2016, As the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, he made the same call.

2015: During an exclusive interview with Bondings 2.0, when asked what his message to LGBTQ+ people was, he responded, “I would say ‘The Church embraces you, wants you, and the Church needs you.  You are not someone who is a burden to the Church.  The Church needs you. You are part of us. We’d like to help you, we’d like to see you more clearly.  We are struggling to see how to help you more with pastoral care.’ I’d also say, ‘Don’t get discouraged.’”

2018: He blesssed the establishment of a telephone hotline to help LGBTQ+ people and allies who struggle with faith.

2019: He supported the establishment of a national Catholic LGBTQ+ ministry in India.

2024: He greeted and blessed the first national Catholic conference on LGBTQ+ issues in India.

That is quite a list of support on issues both inside and outside the church!  It’s interesting to look back at such a list to see these highlights.  In one sense, none of them seem incredibly radical.  They appear to be simple items that we would hope that any Catholic bishop or leader would do.  But in another sense, it is important to remember that a decade ago, at the dawning of the papacy of Pope Francis, such steps were considered highly radical, and, as the links in this post show, often made national and international news.  We’ve come a long way. We still have a long way to go.

The long way ahead, however, has been made easier because of the courageous and compassionate statements and actions of people like Cardinal Gracias, who, like Pope Francis, followed his human heart to take a stand against oppression and exclusion.  We all have his big shoes to fill.

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, March 7, 2025