Georgetown U. Awards Fellowship to Jesuit Studying LGBTQ+ People’s Relationship With the Church

Georgetown University has awarded a fellowship to a Jesuit priest to do research on LGBTQ+ Catholics.

During his time as Georgetown’s  John Hayden Doctoral Dissertation Fellow, Jesuit Fr. Lucas Sharma, will complete his dissertation on LGBTQ+ Catholics’ relationship to the Church, while also serving as a pastoral associate at the university’s LGBTQ+ resource center. 

Father Lucas Sharma, SJ

Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for Mission & Ministry at Georgetown, the Jesuit university in Washington, DC, said he looked forward to working with Sharma “to create an ever more welcoming environment for our student body.”

In its press release announcing its selection, the university included an interview with Sharma, who explained his area of study and his connections to LGBTQ+ ministry. 

For his academic work, Sharma is interviewing both LGBTQ+ Catholics who have stayed in the Church and those who have left it. The priest believes that the conversations offer a treasury of insight to the Church:

“I’m hoping to understand how, in today’s context of the Catholic Church in the United States and across the world, people — by virtue of being themselves — are shaping the institutional church. I’m curious to find out how their own witness or presence is helping the Catholic Church grapple with the experiences of people on the margins. And from a theological perspective, what God might be doing through and with them and to the larger church.

“It’s not just religious people like priests or theologians who shape what the church looks like. It’s also the entire people of God and the diversity of people’s experiences who shape what the future of the institutional church will look like.”

A personal experience catalyzed Sharma’s LGBTQ+ outreach. While living at a retired priests’ home during the pandemic, Sharma spoke with Fr. Leo, an older priest who ministered during the AIDS pandemic:

“We sat outside, and this Jesuit priest started to cry as if he was remembering getting involved for the first time. He said, ‘I found a population that nobody cared about, and I wanted to go be there.’

“I am inspired by Father Leo’s example to ‘go be there,’ and want to do the same – to accompany not just LGBTQ Catholics but also all people who identify as LGBTQ because I also desire to follow in Pope Francis’ words of ‘todos, todos, todos,’ the Church is for everyone.”

Sharma brings that conviction to his work at the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, where he plans to honor the whole person, meeting individuals where they’re at. As for his dissertation work, Sharma said that the results so far have surprised him:

“When I proposed this project, I imagined a binary between those who stay Catholic and those who leave Catholicism. I have interviewed 32 men and 17 women who’ve left at this point. What I’ve found is there is a more nuanced, complicated relationship than just leave or stay…There’s this Portuguese conception of saudade, a longing that’s deeper than nostalgia. There’s something more complicated than just leaving or staying.”

—Jeromiah Taylor, New Ways Ministry, November 6, 2025

Editor’s note:  More detailed information on Fr. Sharma’s research will appear in tomorrow’s blog post.