National Magazines Feature Work of New Ways Ministry, Part 2

New Ways Ministry was recently featured in two large media outlets, one secular and one Catholic: The Nation and St. Anthony Messenger. 

Today’s post will feature St. Anthony Messenger’s article; yesterday’s post featured the one from The Nation.

The September 2025 issue of St. Anthony Messenger, the monthly magazine of Franciscan Friars (OFM) in the United States carried an article about New Ways Ministry by Stephen Copeland,“A Loud Amen: One Woman’s Journey as a Gay Catholic.”

Copeland’s story describes New Ways Ministry’s mission of reconciliation and justice by describing the experience that one woman had through the group’s work.  The story is a deeply personal telling of the role that New Ways Ministry’s co-founder, Sr. Jeannine Gramick, played in one woman’s journey as a Catholic lesbian. The article focuses on Sandra Worsham, a lesbian who converted to Catholicism in the 1970s, inspired by her Catholic coworker’s ability to remain celibate. The coworker, Elizabeth Horne, was also gay, and for 30 years she and Worsham “lived together as roommates, best friends, partners, spouses,” while remaining celibate. 

After Horne’s death, Worsham began to desire a more open life as a lesbian. “I was tired of being sorry for who I am,” she said. 

After years of slowly accepting herself, and finally getting married to her new partner, Worsham leaned on the counsel of Sr. Gramick when it came to integrating her new life with her deeply-held Catholic faith. After a show-down at her parish resulting in her being banned from music ministry and communion, Sr. Gramick encouraged Worsham to reappear at her parish and take communion. 

“Your life is a sermon,” Sr. Gramick told Worsham. “The more people who know someone who is gay, the more they’re going to accept gay people.” 

Sandra Worsham

Eventually Worsham returned to the communion line, filled with apprehension, yet buoyed by Sr. Gramick’s words. 

Copeland describes the scene this way:

“During the homily that night, the priest talked about how the American Church was being persecuted, about how he would never perform a gay wedding, about how imperative it was for Sacred Heart parishioners to stand up for a traditional sexual ethic. 

“But Worsham was thinking about a different sermon, the one Sister Jeannine had written to her about. ‘Your life is a sermon,’ she had said. 

“During Communion, Worsham walked to the front. She held out her hands. She looked the priest in the eye. ‘The body of Christ,’ he said. 

“I said, ‘Amen.’ And I said it loud.” 

In the article, New Ways Ministry’s Executive Director Francis DeBernardo also shared his own journey towards full-time involvement with New Ways Ministry.  Copeland describes: 

“Francis DeBernardo described himself as the ‘last triumphalist Catholic’ throughout the 1980s. He had been ‘fiercely proud of Catholicism as he worked for The Tablet in Brooklyn, as he read the works of Catholic Worker cofounder Dorothy Day, as he studied Catholic social teaching, as he witnessed how the Vatican and United States bishops spoke out about income inequality and against nuclear weapons during the height of the Cold War. 

“But in 1992, his pride in Catholicism came crashing down when the Vatican released a document instructing US bishops to be extremely cautious about supporting legislation to protect lesbian and gay people’s civil rights—including to the point of opposing such legislation. This was all on the heels of a 1986 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which described homosexual acts as ‘intrinsically disordered.’ Doctrine was one thing, but DeBernardo took this new challenge to civil rights as an affront to basic Catholic social teaching.”

DeBernardo described his own awareness of the precarious situation of LGBTQ+ Catholics by recounting his first experience with a DignityUSA Mass in Philadelphia:

“You just got the sense that this was a group of people in exile, you know, in exile from the Church. But even though they were in exile, they were fiercely holding on to their Catholic identity, which really impressed me. Those stories of oppression mixed with commitment really helped me, I’d say, to start reading the Gospels differently. I started seeing how much Jesus went to the exiles, to the marginalized.” 

New Ways Ministry helps LGBTQ+ people feel welcome in the church, by working with church leaders and pastoral ministers.  Copeland writes:

“DeBernardo says New Ways has a two-pronged approach to gay and lesbian ministry: educate and advocate. This helps Catholics in the LGBTQ community to feel seen and accepted while a space is created for them to use sexuality to inspire personal growth and spiritual discovery.”

Sr. Gramick expressed the charism of New Ways Ministry by neatly summarizing her vision for LGBTQ+ Catholics:

“From its founding, New Ways Ministry has worked to make known the gifts that LGBTQ people bring to the Church and to society. God is not concerned about gender, God cares only that we love.” 

—Jeromiah Taylor, New Ways Ministry, October 14, 2025