LGBTQ+ Jubilee Pilgrimage, Part 1: “Listen to our lived experience. . .because that’s what Jesus would do”

Today’s post is by guest contributor Emma Cieslik (she/her), a queer, disabled museum worker and writer, and the director of the Queer and Catholic Oral History Project. Part 2, explaining the importance of queer visibility for all Catholics, can be found here.

In December 2024, the Italian LGBTQ+ group La Tienda di Gionata (Jonathan’s Tent) announced plans for an LGBTQ+ Pilgrimage for the Jubilee Year.  The pilgrimage, with the theme “Church: A Home for All, LGBTQ+ Christians and Other Existential Foreigners,” will be held on September 6, 2025 in Rome. 

La Tienda di Gionata invited “all associations and groups dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ individuals and their families to join us as we officially cross the Holy Door of the Jubilee at St. Peter’s Basilica.” The pilgrimage will include a Mass celebrated at the Gesù, the historic Jesuit mother church in Rome. Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Episcopal Conference will provide The Gesù will also host a prayer vigil for the pilgrims on the evening of September 5th. [Editor’s note:  New Ways Ministry endorsed the pilgrimage as a supporting organization.]

The pilgrimage represents a significant step in LGBTQ+ visibility in the Church—although the event, a spokesperson for the Vatican’s Jubilee office confirmed, “is not a Jubilee event sponsored or organized by us” after the announcement of the program appeared on the Vatican’s website. Despite pushback, including pilgrimage details being taken down from the Vatican’s Jubilee website in mid-December, and then being republished in the same week,Tienda di Gionata said the event holds space for LGBTQ+ Catholics to come as they are,  and for other Catholics to see queer people as vital members of the Church and full members of the community.

Brent Taghap (he/they) is a queer, nonbinary Catholic living in Chicago who is “still very much in my reclamation era where I am leaning into my faith more.” For Taghap, it makes sense that the Jesuits would host this event. In the United States, the Jesuits sponsor Outreach—an LGBTQ+ Catholic website resource spearheaded by Fr. James Martin, SJ, with Michael O’Loughlin as the Executive Director. 

Taghap hopes that the pilgrimage “would be very much like Outreach. [That] it’s a safe place to come and pray and meet people and not to feel like you’re having stones thrown at you from the pulpit.” Taghap said, “I pray that it is just an opportunity to listen and to not be reactive,” and for queer Catholics to be safe in showing up as their authentic selves in celebrating the Jubilee Year. But this can be difficult—all three years that Outreach has hosted its conferences; organizers have contended with protestors, including people protesting by praying outside the conference venues.

Taghap believes, if they had attended Mass with them and others, it would help them to see queer Catholics as human beings with vital dignity in the Church and a deep desire for spirituality. “I hope the thing that comes out of this,” Taghap said, “is the opportunity for our siblings in Christ to just listen to us and to listen to our stories without reacting, without throwing theology at us … listen to our lived experiences and understand because that’s what Jesus would do.”

Queer activism and inclusion has been a key part of Catholic pastoral care for decades, with organizations like Dignity, New Ways Ministry, the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, and Outreach, the rich history of gender and sexual diversity within the Catholic Church, and Pope Francis holding space to greet and speak with LGBTQ+ Catholics and queer pilgrims over the past 25 years.

Pope Francis greeted LGBTQ+ pilgrims from the U.K. in 2019, and the Vatican synod office listed New Ways Ministry’s resources on their website, although it was temporarily removed and later restored with apologies from the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops in 2023. New Ways Ministry met twice with Pope Francis to brief him on LGBTQ+ issues. On the second visit, New Ways staff brought members of the transgender and intersex community with them to speak directly with the pope.   Additionally, Pope Francis greeted trans men and women during general audiences in St. Peter’s Square. Maxwell Kuzma, a trans man and lifelong Catholic who is a contributor to The National Catholic Reporter and Bondings 2.0,  was one of those greeted by the pontiff.

For Kuzma, the pilgrimage may seem like a small step but creating a space where queer Catholics can be visible has a tangible impact on the safety of future LGBTQ+ Catholics, even if the Church does not accept them fully into the Church. Kuzma stayed in the Church and remained visible for this very reason. “I made the determination for myself that it was for the next generation,” Kuzma said, “that they [queer people] are going to be born into these [Catholic] families. Again, just because we don’t have education about LGBTQ+ people or we try to pretend that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist, they still do. Any openly LGBTQ+ person will tell you.”

Kuzma and Taghap acknowledge that while they will likely not see a welcoming and affirming Church for all LGBTQ+ people in their lifetime, they hope their visibility will make a difference for future generations. By staying in this broken space, they dream of being the queer elders who have inspired them and who help LGBTQ+ Catholic visibility to be actualized in new and creative ways, just like the upcoming pilgrimage will do.

—Emma Cieslik (she/her), July 4, 2025