On September 4, a night surely unlike any other the Church of the Gesù has seen in its long history, a congregation of LGBTQ+ Catholics, family members, and friends filled its nave. Standing between St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, we prayed, worshiped, and shared the sacred stories of our lives. As the evening prayer service reached its climax, a cacophony of languages filled the church as LGBTQ Catholics from forty countries repeated the words of Christ uttered the evening of his Resurrection: “Peace be with you. La pace. La paz.”
The pilgrims’ greetings of peace were hushed only when the choir began its rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s 1986 hit song, “True Colors.” Lauper’s words of hope emerged in a year that was particularly painful for LGBTQ+ Catholics, who witnessed friends dying from AIDS and who faced growing resistance from the church’s hierarchy. But on that Friday night in 2025, the words of Lauper’s song joyfully echoed between the holy walls of the Gesù, among the pilgrims gathered there. The evening was an offering of song, tears, smiles, and profound joy. I was privileged to be among the pilgrims in the Gesù that evening.
Gathering together
On September 4 and 5, approximately 1,300 LGBTQ+ Catholic pilgrims, family members, and friends assembled in Rome to celebrate the Jubilee Year. The event was months in the making, with preparations having begun last December. Members of the Italian LGBTQ+ group Tenda di Gionata (Tent of Jonathan), noting the groups the Holy See invited to participate in Jubilee Year events, believed that LGBTQ+ Catholics should also be represented among the millions to make pilgrimage to Rome in 2025.
To everyone’s great surprise, the Holy See added the pilgrimage for LGBTQ+ Catholics to their official calendar last December. At the invitation of Tenda di Gionata, individuals and groups of LGBTQ+ Catholics around the world joined in on the event. Groups included the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and my own organization, DignityUSA, the oldest and largest organization of LGBTQ+ Catholics representing those from the United States.
Celebrating together
The event began with a standing-room-only Mass, again at the Church of the Gesù, celebrated by Bishop Francesco Savino, the vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. Dozens of priests joined him in concelebrating. The Mass began with a rite of sprinkling, a reminder that all of us were consecrated in baptism.
The liturgy proceeded with a reading in English from the Acts of the Apostles. We heard the story of Peter and the Roman centurion Cornelius. The passage from Acts recounts how Peter, skeptical of the Gentile Christians, had a vision that led him ultimately to the house of Cornelius, where he witnessed the Holy Spirit already at work in Cornelius, his relatives, and friends. Repenting of his former way of exclusion, Peter declared, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). Then and there, he baptized Cornelius and the other Gentiles. On that day a people thought to be outside God’s embrace were welcomed into the church—first by the Holy Spirit, and only later by Peter.
Even in my limited Italian, I could recognize the gospel, which I quietly recited by heart to myself in English: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). In his homily, Bishop Savino warmly welcomed the pilgrims and offered a message as relevant to the whole church as it was to those gathered in the Gesù: “Brothers and sisters, I say this with emotion: It is time to restore dignity to everyone, especially those who have been denied it.” The pilgrims responded with a sustained and enthusiastic applause.
Through the Holy Door
By three o’clock the pilgrimage was set to begin, in the Roman heat and sunshine. Many pilgrims wore rainbow attire. T-shirts proclaimed, “Dios es amor” (God is love), “Nell’amore con c’è timore” (In love there is no fear), and simply “Love.” Members of Tenda di Gionata led the way with a rainbow-colored cross, and occasionally burst into spontaneous song. About an hour later, our pilgrimage reached its apex, as we passed through the Holy Door and into St. Peter’s Basilica, among the thousands of faithful who converged in Rome that day. We were pilgrims among pilgrims, Catholics among Catholics, welcomed into a church that was already our home.
Our joy, the church’s joy
The symbols, signs, and scriptures of the day speak as powerfully to the wider church as they did to the LGBTQ+ Catholics gathered in Rome. For many LGBTQ+ Catholics, the rainbow has been a sign of hope in God’s mercy and love, hope for a better future. The rainbow has also been a reminder of God’s unfailing love for us, even in a church that has sometimes given us reason to question it. Our rainbows that day were not symbols of protest, but a sign of our faith in Christ and our enduring love for the church.
The sprinkling we received with holy water recalled our baptism: the sacrament of belonging, of welcome, of our call to holiness—the same belonging, welcome, and holiness that LGBTQ+ Catholics share with everyone else in our church.
Bishop Savino’s words and the vigorous applause that followed felt like an early moment of victory, not only for LGBTQ+ people, but for the whole church. Since the days of the last pope named Leo, church teachings have been developing and reforming to better reflect what Vatican II called, “the exalted dignity proper to the human person.” The human and Christian dignity of LGBTQ+ persons beckon the church to grow and develop its teachings about our lives and relationships.
The story of Peter and Cornelius remains one for our own time. A people once thought to be on the outside of the church already bear the Holy Spirit and remind us that “God shows no partiality.” Walking the boulevard to St. Peter’s Basilica, it truly felt that a “year of the Lord’s favor” had fallen to God’s beloved LGBTQ+ people. On that warm sunny Roman Saturday, we felt that the scriptures were being fulfilled in our hearing. Truly the joys that we shared are the joys of the whole church.
Ours has been a decades-long, or even a centuries-long pilgrimage of abiding trust that Christ walks with us, and that our church can become what it is called to be. Our pilgrimage was not ended at the threshold of the Holy Door. God’s beloved LGBTQ+ people will continue to cross through the doors of our churches, proclaim our own dignity, and appeal to the church’s shepherds to join hands with us in doing the same.
But for those two days in Rome, we experienced the great joy and consolation of simply being welcomed—even though we already belonged.
Image: Courtesy of Sam Albano
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