Why LGBTQ+ people are worried about Cardinal Robert Sarah potentially being elected pope
Newly appointed cardinal, Guinean Robert Sarah (L) greets visitors during the traditionnal courtesy visit after the consistory on November 20, 2010 at The Vatican. (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
Newly appointed cardinal, Guinean Robert Sarah (L) greets visitors during the traditionnal courtesy visit after the consistory on November 20, 2010 at The Vatican. (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
The Vatican conclave of cardinals is currently in full swing, and the world is waiting with baited breath to find out who will be the next pope… with many LGBTQ+ people concerned that it will be Cardinal Robert Sarah.
Several cardinals have emerged as possible front-runners for the papacy. Bookmakers believe that Cardinal Pietro Parolin is most likely to be elected as the new pope, with Filipino prelate Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle in second place. Both are relatively moderate and progressive figures, Tagle arguably more so.
However, another name that has been bandied about, causing concern in LGBTQ+ circles, is Cardinal Robert Sarah, from Guinea. The 79-year-old prelate has been thunderously vocal and vehemently negative about the queer community over the years, and holds extremely anti-LGBTQ+ views.
In January 2012, for example, after Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, called on African nations to repeal laws that criminalised homosexuality, Sarah denounced his speech as “stupid”, adding: “You cannot impose something stupid like that. Poor countries like Africa just accept it because it’s imposed upon them through money, through being tied to aid.”
In 2014, Cardinal Sarah suggested that advocacy on behalf of same-sex unions formed “part of a new ideology of evil.” Then, in a September 2015 interview, he described same-sex unions as “retrogressive for culture and civilisation” and a problem for all of humanity.
This in contrast with Pope Francis’s more modern and open-minded views on same-sex unions: in October 2023, LGBTQ+ groups praised Pope Francis for saying that same-sex couples should be allowed to have their unions blessed, though he later backtracked, and clarified that he would bless LGBTQ+ people but not their unions.
In October 2015, at the Synod of the Family, Cardinal Sarah went on a huge anti-LGBTQ+ rant, claiming that “Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism” could be seen as “almost like two apocalyptic beasts,” and noting that terrorist attacks in France and Tunisia had taken place on the same day that the US Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalised same-sex marriage in America.
Also, in language that echoes the current Trump administration’s views on LGBTQ+ rights, at the US National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 2016, Cardinal Sarah said that “God is being eroded, eclipsed, [and] liquidated… in the name of ‘tolerance'”, citing “the legalization of same-sex marriage” and the right of trans people to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, asking: “Should not a biological man use the men’s restroom?”
LGBTQ+ people around the world are currently experiencing unprecedented attacks on their rights, as their very existence is leveraged by politicians to win divisive culture wars and distract voters from the real issues on hand, like the climate crisis, poverty, and warfare. A Cardinal Robert Sarah papacy is absolutely not what the queer community – or the world – needs at the moment.
