Pope Leo meets Catholic LGBTQ+ advocate and vows continuity with Francis’ progressive legacy

Leo XIV has met with an LGBTQ+ Catholic advocate who believes queer members of the Church will be “happy with [the new pope’s] approach”.

After his election in May, some of Pope Leo’s past comments came to light, in which he was critical of entertainment media that held “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” including “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”.

Although his remarks were a departure from the views of Pope Francis who, while having a complex relationship with the queer community, sought to make the Catholic Church more inclusive, now, according to the Associated Press, Leo has told New York Jesuit author and editor Rev James Martin that he intended to continue his predecessor’s policy of LGBTQ+ acceptance.

“I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people,” Martin told AP following his audience with Pope Leo on Monday (1 September). “It was wonderful, very encouraging and frankly a lot of fun.”

Martin said the pair had worked together before Leo became pope and always found him to be “a very open, welcoming, inclusive person”.

He went on to say: “If people were happy with pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with pope Leo’s approach. He asked me to continue what I’m doing, which was very encouraging.”

Following his election, Leo, the first pontiff born in the US, affirmed that his views on equal marriage aligned with the Catholic Church’s core teachings, whereby the family was “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. He added: “No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”

While Francis said being gay was a “human fact” and “not a crime” and labelled the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people “wrong”, he only supported blessings for queer people, not their actual unions. He also faced criticism for reportedly using the word “frociaggine” which roughly translates as f****t.

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