Pro, Con, and In-Between Opinions of Pope Francis’ LGBTQ+ Record

As commentary on Pope Francis’ profound impact on LGBTQ+ people around the world continues to pour in, Bondings 2.0 continues to compile perspectives. In today’s post, we present  some touching testimonies from a lapsed cradle Catholics who felt empowered to return to an active Catholic practice thanks to Francis’ welcome, and from young people on a Catholic campus. We also present some insights from an ecumenical leader, and pro and con perspectives on Francis’ LGBTQ+ legacy from two secular journalists. 

Lauren J. Joseph

Writing in Autostraddle, transwoman, actor, and writer Lauren J. Joseph credited Francis for her return to her childhood faith — but this time as her full self:

“His papacy had shown me that there was a place for me in the faith, by constantly underscoring the all-encompassing love of God, the tender compassion of Christ which I had so long found missing. With that I was able to return to regular church attendance, and I even began to read at Mass. I started volunteering for a diocesan homeless lunch service and was finally confirmed, as Lauren. The simple fact is that Pope Francis made it possible for me, and many other queer and trans Catholics, to participate fully in the life of the Church.”

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a Protestant who is Vice President of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance, expressed similar sentiments via MSNBC:

“For many LGBTQ Christians like myself, the changes Francis championed feel personal. I’ve experienced both the sting of exclusion and the quiet hope that, perhaps one day, church pews will be filled with all those who long to find God’s love, regardless of whom they love. I’ve witnessed Catholic LGBTQ friends endure so much harm from the church hierarchy. Francis’ change of posture toward the community let light shine in the darkness. 

“I’ve seen the hope Pope Francis has given to LGBTQ Catholics in particular. One of my best friends from college come out as a lesbian and yet maintain her Catholic faith in the midst of much hate. There’s been so much positive change toward LGBTQ equality since we started college together in 2008; I was even able to officiate her wedding in 2022. While worshipping with her on multiple occasions for Catholic mass, I’ve given thanks to God for the many LGBTQ Catholics who have stayed committed to their faith.”

However, Graves-Fitzimmons acknowledged the extraordinarily low-bar for Catholic inclusion, and expressed a cautious hope that Francis’ efforts might bear future fruits:

“Francis’ plea for mercy for the vulnerable, whether LGBTQ people or migrants, is both remarkable — and basic Christianity. In many ways it’s a sad reflection of what we expect of Christian leaders to find Pope Francis so revolutionary. 

“Pope Francis’s legacy is a call — to look beyond our fears, to challenge our prejudices, and ultimately, to choose mercy over judgment. And for those of us who have long felt the pain of exclusion, that call offers a glimmer of hope that one day, we might finally be home.”

John Casey

The senior editor of the Advocate, John Casey, gave thanks for Francis’ tectonic shift in pastoral approaches to LGBTQ+ people, but also grieved the clawbacks he anticipates in coming years. In an essay entitled “In his heart, I believe Pope Francis was a much stronger LGBTQ+ ally than he appeared in public,” Casey wrote:

“Metaphorically, Francis cracked the holy door for LGBTQ+ individuals. He let us go beyond the vestibule and made us a part of the sanctuary. And that was reassuring because the Church should be a sanctuary for us or anyone else in the LGBTQ+ community who values their faith, loves their God, and doubts if that faith or God values them.

“Francis wanted us there. He wanted us to sing. To take communion. To pray. And he wanted us to shake his hand or hug him on the way out. And he wanted us to come back, and with his loss, I’m not so sure I will come back.

“Now that he’s gone, I’m not sure the church will let me go beyond the vestibule again, and that makes me very sad today.”

Casey argued that Francis was constrained by the Church’s discipline and doctrine, and that the late pope would have done more if possible:

“Despite this internal resistance, the pope remained steadfast, perhaps constrained by the church’s conservative framework, but driven by a personal desire to embrace LGBTQ+ individuals more fully.

“I believe, in his heart, Francis wanted to go much further in bringing the LGBTQ+ community closer to the church. But the institutional weight of centuries of doctrine, combined with the intransigence of powerful conservative factions still prevalent in the church’s hierarchy, often put the brakes on his outreach.”

Frank Bruni

In a much more negative assessment — both of Francis’ actions and motivations — entitled “Pope Francis’ Gay Muddle”, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote:

“For every advance, there was an asterisk, and for every proclamation of love, a delineation of limits, so that Francis — who died on Monday at the age of 88 — personified the indelible tension in the church’s official teaching about homosexuality, which he never squarely renounced. That teaching holds that being gay isn’t a sin but that acting on those feelings is ‘intrinsically disordered.’”

Bruni writes that Francis “erratic, fettered progress” towards “some reconciliation he could never quite reach” was captured by New Ways Ministry’s own title for our Francis chronology: “The Many Faces of Pope Francis.” Riffing off of the “faces” of the late pope, Bruni adds:

“The face on those seemingly epochal July 2013 words, spoken during an extended back-and-forth with the Vatican press corps, was a humble, open, smiling one. Francis’ full sentence: ‘If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?’

“‘Gay’ wasn’t a vernacular that popes before him had publicly used. The ‘good will’ part, the ‘judge’ bit — they suggested such tenderness, such decency. He was indeed a tender, decent man.

“But he was a man of his church and of his generation, steeped in the bigotries of both. He gave me and many other gay people hope. Then he reminded us of why we never look to his church for our dignity.”

Ulises Olea Tapia

However, Francis’ ministry did in fact compel some to look towards the Church. The Georgetown Voice interviewed students and campus leaders at Georgetown University during the week after Francis’ death, and reported an outpouring of gratitude and credit due to the late pope: “Students honored Francis’ service in the role of pope, attributing the creation of new Campus Ministry clubs and a deeper sense of faith in the student body to his influence.”  Among others who praised Francis’ interreligious acumen and Latin American influences, one gay student, Ulises Olea Tapia, said Francis was the reason he returned to the Church:

“Pope Francis truly embodied the best of Catholicism. I spent a lot of time away from my religion and being fully atheist, and then I came back, and I’m so happy I did. If it wasn’t for the ministry of people like Pope Francis, I don’t know if I would be here.”

Olea Tapia credited Francis’ allowing of priests to bless individuals in same-sex couples as especially transformative, saying:

 “I really want to get married, and I would just love to be able to get married in the eyes of God and in a church. And so that move was very meaningful to me because it started conversations about what gay marriage could look like in the Catholic Church.” 

As for what’s next, Olea Tapia told The Georgetown Voice:

“I hope that the next pope is able to learn from Pope Francis and to be humble and to be accepting and to remember that church in Spanish, ‘iglesia,’ and in Greek, ‘ecclesia,’ literally means ‘everyone’—the community of everyone. My message is one of hope. I think that Pope Francis did embody much of what makes Catholicism really beautiful.”

—Jeromiah Taylor, New Ways Ministry, May 5, 2025