“We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their [LGBTQ+] son or daughter.”
(Pope Francis, in an interview with La Nacion, December 2014)
Said in 2014, these words would become Pope Francis’ legacy for LGBTQ+ Catholics around the world—a commitment to fostering a church that supports not just LGBTQ+ people but their parents, their siblings, their loved ones; a church that teaches the communities around us to love us through action and call us by the names we choose for ourselves. It would be nine more years before I understood what this meant.
On the morning of June 16, at the 2023 Outreach Conference, I fidgeted in the black plastic choir chairs in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle. I was nervous—it was my first time attending Mass in over a year. As a queer cradle Catholic, I had begun deconstructing my faith two years earlier and grappling with the purity culture programming I grew up with. I had stopped attending Mass.
As the opening prayer began, I pulled out the program. On the front cover, I saw a photo of the handwritten note Pope Francis sent to conference founder Jesuit Father James Martin and Outreach attendees. In it, the pope said that everyone attending the conference had his prayers and good wishes.
As I prepared later that day to participate in a “Catholic Lesbian Experience” panel, my stomach was in knots. But knowing that Pope Francis was thinking about us, about me, from over 4,000 miles away, was meaningful. It felt like a parent placing their hand on my shoulder; I didn’t need to look back but rather I knew instinctively they were standing behind me.
This is a rare experience for LGBTQ+ Catholics, as many have lost families by blood and families by faith in the church. But Pope Francis’ legacy is affirming the humanity of all LGBTQ+ people. His ministry shows how the church can—and does—love LGBTQ+ people. If he can love them and show this love through action, including small handwritten notes and conversations over pasta, then Catholic parents, siblings, and loved ones can and should too.
In his latest book, Hope: The Autobiography (Penguin Random House) published in January, Francis did just this, writing that “everyone in the church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender.” It was a marked change from what I and other Catholics encountered in the Synod on Synodality’s report two years ago, which didn’t even use the term LGBTQ+.
Pope Francis did call us by our names. Yes, he has used slurs that have hurt us before, names that have been used to cut us down, but by even mentioning our names—homosexual, transgender, gay—we have become part of the church’s two thousand years of history. That is a legacy that will be hard in the internet age to erase—and one that lays the groundwork for inclusion.
Even though the church is slow to change, Pope Francis calling us by our names, mentioning us, meeting with us, listening to us—affirming our humanity—is his legacy and one that will touch the lives not only of every LGBTQ+ Catholic but also of every parent finding the courage to call their own child just as Jesus called them.
This article also appears in the July 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 7, pages 16-21). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash/Courtney Coles
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