— ‘Women have a way of reflecting on theology that is different from us men,’ Francis told the International Theological Commission
Pope Francis speaks to nuns during the weekly general audience, in Paul VI hall at the Vatican, on Wednesday.
By Claire Giangrave
Speaking to members of the International Theological Commission at the Vatican on Thursday, Pope Francis asked theologians, in an unscripted remark, to “demasculinize” the church.
“There is something I don’t like about you, if you excuse my honesty,” said Pope Francis, pointing out that only five women were among the more than 30 theologians. “We need to move forward on this. Women have a way of reflecting on theology that is different from us men,” he added.
The International Theological Commission is part of the Roman Curia and advises the Vatican’s doctrinal department on theological issues. The pope appoints its members, and women have been named as members since 2004.
The pope said he studied the Italian theologian Romano Guardini through the work of a woman, Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, who he said influenced his understanding of women in theology. Francis also said that at his next meeting with the Council of Cardinals, a body that advises him on church matters, he and the cardinals would “reflect on the role of women in the church.”
The general secretary of the commission, Monsignor Piero Coda, said Francis’s words were “an additional encouragement for something that is very dear to the pope but is also at the heart of the journey that the church is undergoing though the synodal process.”
Bishops and laypeople, including an unprecedented number of women, took part in October at the Vatican in the Synod on Synodality, which in its final report demanded a theological reflection on the role of women in the church, as well as the possibility of allowing women to become deacons.
Catholic deacons preach at Mass and perform marriages and baptisms but do not celebrate the Eucharist or hear confessions. Those who oppose allowing female deacons claim it would be a first step toward opening the priesthood to women.
The pope’s words on Thursday underlined “the need to increase the space given to women in positions of authority and decision-making in the Christian community, in order to treasure the sensibility and intelligence that is typical of the feminine genius and experience,” Coda told Religion News Service.
Women have always been important in the church, the theologian said, but “it’s time for this to become part of the culture” to address modern challenges and the “male-dominated view that still exists in the church and in society.”
The small number of female theologians in the church is related to the roles women are offered in the church today, Coda said. “It’s true that women and laypeople are still underrepresented in theology, because theology remains too centered on the formation of presbyters,” or priests, he explained.
“The church is woman,” Francis told the theologians, “and if we cannot understand what a woman is, what is the theology of women, we will never understand the church. One of the great sins we have witnessed is ‘masculinizing’ the church.”
The pope charged those present with the task of reflecting on the role of women in the institution. “This is the job I ask of you, please: Demasculinize the church,” he said.
Francis was not able to read his written speech aloud because of an inflammation of the lungs that has hindered his ability to speak and forced him to cancel a papal visit to Dubai for the COP28 environmental summit. After his off-the-cuff remarks, he told those present that he “spoke too much and it hurt me.”
Coda said he was struck by “the spiritual energy and limitless devotion to the church” that the pope showed during the meeting despite his “fragility.”
Francis urged theologians to be proponents of an “evangelizing theology.”
“It’s essential for you theologians to do this in sync with the people of God, from ‘below,’ with a preferential eye toward the poor and the simple, and at the same time ‘on your knees,’ because theology is born kneeling in adoration to God,” Francis said.
Coda said these qualities have always characterized Catholic theological tradition. “The great theologiansweren’t people who were locked in ivory towers; they were immersed in the life of the people of God,” he said.
On Nov. 8, Francis issued a decree reforming the Pontifical Academy of Theology, which is charged with forming theologians, asking it to embark on “a paradigm shift, a brave cultural revolution,” to promote synodality in the church. — Religion News Service
— Pope Francis has established himself as one of the most boundary-pushing popes the church has ever had. Here are his stances on same-sex marriage, trans people, LGBTQ+ parents, and more.
Every few months, many LGBTQ+ folks find themselves asking the same question: what is even the deal with the pope?
Since becoming the 266th leader of the Catholic Church in 2013, Pope Francis — née Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio — has established himself as one of the most boundary-pushing popes in modern history. That led a group of five cardinals to issue a list of concerns, or dubia, in October 2023 challenging some of his most radical positions on LGBTQ+ rights and other issues.
Still, in the Catholic church, “radical” is subjective. Francis has certainly taken many positions that soften Catholic doctrine when it comes to LGBTQ+ people and issues. That isn’t a hard thing to do, given that his predecessor Pope Benedict believes gay marriage will bring about the apocalypse and some leading bishops even lobbied against an LGBTQ+ suicide hotline. But Francis has also contradicted himself and split some very specific hairs regarding LGBTQ+ rights. And on a few issues, like the concept of transgender people, his principles are strictly orthodox.
With so many different statements released over the past decade, it can be hard to figure out what Pope Francis actually believes, especially about queer and trans people and how we live our lives and fit into the Church. Below, we’ve rounded up the highlights from Francis’ papacy so far to make sense of how Catholicism might slowly be changing, and in what ways it’s still the same old $30 billion tax haven we’re used to.
What is Pope Francis’s stance on gay people?
Francis has generally taken the open-ended position that God loves gays and wants them welcomed in the church. In 2013, the Pope famously said that “if someone is gay and is searching for the Lord […] who am I to judge?” The statement was widely lauded at the time simply for being the first time a pope had ever said the word “gay,” rather than “homosexual,” in public remarks. (Since then, Francis has frequently spoken of “homosexuals” in various comments.) In 2015, Francis affirmed the ministry of Bishop Jacques Gaillot, who was removed from his ministry in 1995 after he blessed gay couples. In 2018 Francis said that gay Catholics are made and loved by God, and in a surprise meeting at the Vatican in 2020, told families of LGBTQ+ youth that “God loves your children as they are.”
But while he has regularly affirmed queer love in the abstract, the pope has been less positive about what all those homosexuals might end up doing with one another. While “being homosexual is not a “crime,” as Francis exhorted in January 2023, he went on to say that “it’s a sin […] first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime.” This seemed to contradict another statement Francis made in 2019, when he said the “tendencies” to be gay “are not a sin.”
In particular, Francis has said that queer relations between clergy members are a “serious concern” and “worry” him. “The question of homosexuality is a very serious one,” Francis said in a 2018 book interview, and there was “no room” for anyone in the ministry to enter a queer relationship (though heterosexual ones were still okay).
“In our societies, it even seems homosexuality is fashionable. And this mentality, in some way, also influences the life of the Church,” he fretted, recommending “persons with this rooted tendency not be accepted into ministry or consecrated life.”
Does Pope Francis support same-sex marriage?
Well, yes, but actually no. Francis is a vocal supporter of legal “civil unions,” but that’s as far from Church orthodoxy as he is willing to stray. This position dates back to his pre-papal days as Cardinal Bergoglio, when he was a leading proponent for a 2010 same-sex “civil union” bill in Argentina. As soon as that bill fell through, however, Bergoglio wrote a letter to the Carmelite Nuns of Buenos Aires to sound the alarm about another bill legalizing same-sex “marriage,” which was ultimately successful. The law would represent “the outright rejection of the law of God,” the pope-to-be wrote at the time, by “a ‘movement’ of the father of lies,” — i.e., Satan — “that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
After Kim Davis infamously refused to grant same-sex marriage licenses to gay couples as a Kentucky county clerk in 2015, claiming she acted “under God’s authority,” Pope Francis met with Davis that September during his visit to Washington, D.C. A Vatican statement asserted Francis only interacted with Davis as part of an audience with “several dozen persons,” and that their meeting “should not be considered a form of support of her position.” But Davis and her lawyers at the conservative Liberty Counsel have told a different story, saying Francis said he would pray for Davis, “thanked her for her courage and told her to ‘stay strong.’”
The pope has continued to ride this line for years, calling same-sex marriage “a contradiction” in some 2019 comments that LGBTQ+ figures roundly condemned. Francis doubled down in 2021, saying that since “marriage” is a God-delivered sacrament, the Church did not have the power to alter its definition. Civil unions can “help the situation” in a legal sense, he explained, but “marriage is marriage.”
As of now, Pope Francis still holds that “civil unions” are the only way to reconcile the religious and legal definitions of marriage. In his response to five conservative cardinals’ complaints in 2023, Francis expressed support for clergy (like Gaillot) who bless same-sex unions, but only if those blessings “do not convey a mistaken concept of marriage.” That privilege is still reserved for “a man and a woman” — specifically, the ones who are “naturally open to procreation.” Super.
What does Pope Francis think about transgender people?
Unsurprisingly, what the pope says about trans people doesn’t always match up with how he treats them. Francis is most infamously known among trans communities for comparing trans people to nuclear weaponry, comments that gave us the best flaggingshirts of all time. “[G]ender theory […] does not recognize the order of creation,” Francis said in a 2014 interview, and thus “man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator” whose design “is written in nature.” Francis reiterated that concept in 2016, writing that trans youth “need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created” rather than physically transition.
In 2019, the Vatican distributed a memo entitled “Male and Female He Created Them,” a document which declared both trans and intersex identities “only a ‘provocative’ display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks’” that “seek to annihilate the concept of ‘nature.’” If you’re nonbinary, no you’re not: that idea is “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants,” wrote Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi in the memo, published by the Vatican Press. In early 2023, Francis went even further: “gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in the world, he said, because “it blurs differences and the value of men and women.” Later in the year, he did make an allowance that trans people could receive baptism, but only if doing so would not cause a “scandal.”
But despite apparently seeing them as unnatural threats to divine creation, Francis has at least provided some amount of material support to trans people in need, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Francis donated an undisclosed amount of money to a group of unhoused trans sex workers sheltering in an Italian church. Since then, he has gone on to meet with the same group at least five separate times, eating pasta with them and over 1,000 others at a lunch in November recognizing the Church’s World Day of the Poor.
For those trans people, the Pope is a major force for good, at least more so than he’s been viewed elsewhere in the world. “We transgenders in Italy feel a bit more human because the fact that Pope Francis brings us closer to the Church is a beautiful thing,” Carla Segovia told Reuters after the lunch. “Because we need some love.”
Does Pope Francis support LGBTQ+ parents and adoption rights?
On this, the Pope has taken a much clearer stance: not on your life. If a “marriage” is no longer between a man and a woman, then-Cardinal Bergoglio wrote in his 2010 letter to the Carmelite Nuns, adopted children will be irrevocably harmed from growing up with gay parents. “At stake are the lives of so many children who will be discriminated against in advance,” he lamented, “depriving them of the human maturation that God wanted to be given with a father and a mother.” (It should be noted that children raised by LGBTQ+ parents develop the same way their peers do, and may even have some advantages.)
Since becoming pope, Francis has not officially changed his stance. In 2013, a bishop reported that the pope was “shocked” by a civil union bill in Malta that would have allowed LGBTQ+ couples to adopt. The year after, Francis reiterated that children have “a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother” and warned against being tempted towards “the poisonous environment of the temporary.” As comparatively boundary-pushing as some of his other views might be, we wouldn’t expect Francis to change on this one anytime soon.
Does the Pope at least like my pets?
Bad news! Owning pets is also a metaphysical threat to the fabric of reality, even for straights. “Many, many couples do not have children because they do not want to, or they have just one — but they have two dogs, two cats,” Francis said in 2022, calling the trend a “denial of fatherhood or motherhood” that “diminishes us” and “takes away our humanity.” We can only imagine what the guy thinks of Sapphics who own more than one litterbox.
After a massive consultation of Catholics around the world and a Vatican summit to discuss the future of the church, Pope Francis has directed theologians to tread new paths, shift paradigms and embrace synodality.
In a decree issued Nov. 1, Pope Francis challenged the Pontifical Theological Academy — the body tasked with instructing Catholic theologians — to embrace an evolving theology that cannot be limited to “abstractly rehashing formulas and patterns from the past.”
“A synodal, missional and ‘outgoing’ church can only correspond to an ‘outgoing’ theology,” Francis wrote in the decree, also known as a motu proprio. “Theological reflections are hence called to a turning point, a paradigm shift, ‘a brave cultural revolution,’” the pope added, emphasizing such a theology must meet people in the concrete reality of their lives, culture and environment.
According to the theologian Leonardo Paris, who teaches philosophy at the Romano Guardini Institute of Religious Sciences, the new papal bull is asking theologians to help realize Francis’ vision for a church that is open to today’s realities.
“In the document we can see that the pope is aware of the need for theological tools that will ensure that synodality, and new questions that arise, are properly addressed,” Paris told Religion News Service on Tuesday (Nov. 7).
Pope Francis recently concluded the so-called Synod on Synodality, a monthlong (Oct. 4-29) gathering of Catholic bishops and lay Catholic faithful at the Vatican to discuss some of the most hot-button issues in the church. The lively conversations that occurred touched on LGBTQ inclusion, female ordination and the possibility of married priesthood, as laid out in a synthesis document published Oct. 28.
On many issues the synthesis called for continued study by experts and theologians, taking into account other disciplines, including science and psychology. Specifically, on the issue of whether women can be ordained deacons — who can preach at Mass but not hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist — the synod assembly called for more theological research ahead of their next meeting in the fall of 2024.
In an interview with the Italian news channel TG1, Francis asked for a theology that could recognize that “the power of the Woman Church and of women in the church is greater and more important than that of male ministers. Mary is more important than Peter, because the Church is woman.” This aspect cannot be reduced to a simple question of ordination, the pope stated.
“I think the pope is being sincere,” Paris said. “It’s a complicated issue and the pope wants to offer an answer that isn’t simply cultural or emotional, but also theological.”
Pope Francis’ approach to theology has evolved over the years. When he was an archbishop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he criticized theologians for being more concerned with abstract ideas than the real lives of people. In his 10 years as pope, Francis has often remarked that the “pueblo fiel,” Spanish for the faithful, have an infallible intuition on Catholic teaching.
Pope Francis delivers a blessing during the Angelus noon prayer in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023.
“To know what to believe one must look to the authority, but to know how to believe one must look to the faithful,” explained Massimo Borghesi, a philosopher at the University of Perugia and author of “The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Intellectual Journey.”
According to Pope Francis, when authority becomes separated from the faith of the people it falls into clericalism, the belief that clergy hold a higher status within the church. “The church breathes through two lungs, the institution and charisms, the people and the authority,” Borghesi said, laying out the pope’s views.
Francis’ answer to the separation between the hierarchy and the faithful is synodality — an openness to dialogue and encounter with those of differing experiences and perspectives — which he is attempting to inject into every aspect of the church, including theology.
Theology is called to be “a transcendent knowledge, which is at the same time attentive to the voice of the people, hence a ‘popular theology,’” Francis wrote in his decree. To do this, theologians must embrace dialogue with different traditions and religions, “openly engaging with everyone, believers and non-believers,” he added.
This is nothing new, according to Paris, who said this understanding of theology was already enshrined in “Lumen Gentium,” Latin for “Light of Nations,” the final document emerging from the Second Vatican Council in 1964. “Following the council, this is the direction that theology has undertaken, or at least attempted to,” he said.
Of course, he added, engaging with literature is easier for theologians than engaging with highly specialized sciences. “Understanding quantum mechanics is not exactly a walk in the park,” Paris said.
There is some pushback against Francis’ vision for a “theologian who smells of the flock,” Paris admitted. “Lately in the church there is a polarization that seems to suggest that engaging in contextual dialogue is something new,” he said, pointing to “theological, but also ideological and cultural tensions.”
In the interview, Pope Francis criticized reactionaries “who don’t accept that the church moves forward.” Instead, the church must grow “like the fruit of the tree, but always attached to its roots,” the pope said.
Francis has often quoted fifth-century St. Vincent of Lérins, who laid out a vision for the harmonious development of Catholic teaching that is “consolidated through the years, developed over time, refined by age.” On the death penalty, on slavery and even on atomic weapons, doctrine has changed, the pope said, suggesting there is no reason why it shouldn’t change some more.
Pope Francis has revoked retired Cardinal Raymond Burke’s salary and his right to a subsidized apartment in the Vatican.
The staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Burke has been one of the most vocal critics of the pope’s outreach to the queer community and other liberal moves.
“Francis told a meeting of the heads of Vatican offices last week that he was moving against Burke because he was a source of ‘disunity’ in the church,” the Associated Press reports, citing an anonymous source. Burke hadn’t received any notice of the action as of Tuesday, his secretary told the AP. A Vatican spokesman contacted by The New York Timeswouldn’t confirm or deny the report.
“Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013,” the Times notes, Burke “emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.”
Most recently, Burke was one of five retired cardinals who submitted questions to the pope on his stances on a variety of issues, including marriage equality and same-sex unions, women in the priesthood, and who is the ultimate worldly authority of the Catholic Church. Francis responded by indicating he would be open to some form of blessing for same-sex unions, although he said they should not be considered marriages, and said the ordination of women “can be the object of study.” He did not make any definitive changes, however.
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Burke’s anti-LGBTQ+ views are in keeping with church doctrine that gay sex is a sin and that gender is fixed at birth, but he has often been more hostile to the LGBTQ+ community than other Catholic leaders.
In 2003, as a bishop of Wisconsin, he ordered the church-supported Central Wisconsin HIV/AIDS Ministry Project to cease participating in the state’s AIDS walk or accepting any of the funds raised because, he said, some of the other groups that benefit from the walk “actively and publicly promote homosexual activity.”
Burke went on to become archbishop of St. Louis, where he served from 2004 to 2008, then headed the church’s highest court. He was appointed to the court position by Francis’s immediate predecessor, conservative Pope Benedict XVI, but was removed from that post by Francis in 2014. He has continued speaking out against the LGBTQ+ community as a retired cardinal.
In March 2020, as many churches began holding services remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said faithful Catholics should attend Mass in person to fight changes in the culture, including recognition of transgender identity. “We need only to think of the pervasive attack upon the integrity of human sexuality, of our identity as man or woman, with the pretense of defining for ourselves, often employing violent means, a sexual identity other than that given to us by God,” he wrote on his website at the time. “With ever greater concern, we witness the devastating effect on individuals and families of the so-called ‘gender theory.’”
Burke was a COVID vaccine skeptic, even repeating a conspiracy theory that vaccines included microchips with which governments could monitor people’s movements. He contracted COVID in 2021.
This is Pope Francis’s second recent action against a major critic. This month he removed Bishop Joseph Strickland as head of the diocese of Tyler, Texas. Strickland had accused Francis of undermining the faith through his tentatively liberal moves, including his welcoming attitude toward LGBTQ+ people.
This gathering took place as part of the Catholic Church’s “World Day of the Poor.”
The pope and these transgender women have developed a close relationship, which originated during the COVID-19 pandemic when the pontiff assisted them when they were unable to work.
Now, they have monthly VIP visits with the pope and receive support in the form of medicine, money, and other essentials.
The luncheon was a broader event, with around 1,200 impoverished or homeless individuals also attending inside the papal audience hall to enjoy a full meal and dessert.
This invitation to transgender women aligns with a recent Vatican document that generated controversy.
Released earlier in the month, the document affirms that individuals dealing with gender identity disorders are permitted to be baptized or serve as godparents under specific conditions.
While responding to a query from Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro, the guidance from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Pope Francis, maintains that the baptism or involvement as godparents must not cause “scandal” or “disorientation.”
This nuanced stipulation has been praised by LGBTQ+ advocates.
Pope Francis: ‘Who Am I to Judge?’
Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations are applauding Pope Francis for his message of inclusivity, recognizing that gay and transgender individuals have historically felt marginalized within a church that officially characterizes homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered.”
Francis has been on a trajectory toward greater acceptance, starting with his notable “Who am I to judge” remark in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, AP reports.
In January, he reinforced this stance by asserting that “being homosexual is not a crime.”
The pope has consistently evolved his position, emphasizing that everyone, unequivocally, is a child of God, loved by God, and welcomed in the church – a sentiment expressed with the resounding declaration, “todos, todos, todos” (everyone, everyone, everyone).
However, this judgment-free perspective isn’t universally shared within the Catholic Church.
A recent synod, a gathering of bishops and laypeople at the Vatican, stopped short of explicitly advocating for the welcoming of LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Pope Francis’ approach has faced strong opposition from conservative Catholics, including cardinals.
Despite internal divisions, LGBTQ+ advocacy groups like GLAAD and DignityUSA see Pope Francis’ inclusive tone as a powerful message.
They believe it could encourage political and cultural leaders to cease the persecution, exclusion, and discrimination against transgender individuals.
Lunch with Pope Francis
Latin America migrants and sex workers had the opportunity to share a meal with Pope Francis featuring cannelloni pasta filled with spinach and ricotta, followed by meatballs in tomato-basil sauce and tiramisu for dessert, THEM noted.
“We transgenders in Italy feel a bit more human because the fact that Pope Francis brings us closer to the Church is a beautiful thing,” Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old sex worker from Argentina, said, expressing gratitude.
Claudia Vittoria Salas, a trans tailor and house cleaner from Argentina, had a personal connection to the recent declaration by the Catholic Church regarding trans godparents.
She shared that she had previously worked as a sex worker to support her nieces and nephews, to whom she served as a godparent. She found herself seated next to Pope Francis during the lunch.
“Before, the church was closed to us. They didn’t see us as normal people; they saw us as the devil. Then Pope Francis arrived, and the doors of the church opened for us,” Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a trans woman from Colombia, said, reflecting on the changing perception of the church.
What is Pope Francis’s stance on gay people?
