— The ruling in the homeland of Pope Francis cast a spotlight on the long-standing of abuse of nuns by priests and bishops in the Catholic Church.
FILE – Women gather round the San Bernardo Convent in support of the convent’s cloistered nuns who accused the Archbishop of Salta Mario Antonio Cargnello and other church officials of gender-based psychological and physical violence, in Salta, Argentina, May 3, 2022. An Argentine court ruled on Thursday, April 4, 2024, that Cargnello and three other church officials committed different forms of violence against the cloistered nuns of the convent.
An Argentine judge on Friday ruled that 20 cloistered nuns had suffered abuse for more than two decades at the hands of high-ranking clergy in the country’s conservative north, and ordered the accused archbishop and church officials to undergo psychological treatment and training in gender discrimination.
The ruling in the homeland of Pope Francis cast a spotlight on the long-standing of abuse of nuns by priests and bishops in the Catholic Church.
Though long overshadowed by other church scandals, such abuses in religious life are increasingly being aired and denounced as a result of nuns feeling emboldened by the #MeToo movement, which has a corollary in the church, #NunsToo.
“I conclude and affirm that the nuns have suffered acts of gender violence religiously, physically, psychologically and economically for more than 20 years,” Judge Carolina Cáceres said in the ruling from Salta in northwestern Argentina.
She also ordered the verdict be conveyed to Francis.
The four accused clergy members have denied committing any violence. The archbishop’s lawyer, Eduardo Romani, dismissed Friday’s ruling as baseless and vowed to appeal. Still, he said, the archbishop would abide by the order to receive treatment and anti-discrimination training through a local NGO “whether or not he agrees with its basis.”
But complaints have largely fallen on deaf ears at the Vatican and in the rigid all-male hierarchy at the local level in Argentina, apparently prompting the nuns in Salta to seek remedy in the secular justice system. A similar dynamic played out when the clergy abuse of minors scandal first erupted decades ago and victims turned to the courts because of inaction by church authorities.
The 20 nuns from the reclusive order of Discalced Carmelites at San Bernardo Monastery — dedicated to solitude, silence and daily contemplative prayer — brought their case forward in 2022, sending shockwaves through conservative Salta.
Their complaints cited a range of mistreatment including verbal insults, threats, humiliation and physical — although not sexual — assault.
The nuns describe archbishop Mario Cargnello as grabbing, slapping and shaking women. At one point, they said, Cargnello squeezed the lips of a nun to silence her. At another, he pounced on a nun, striking her as he struggled to snatch a camera from her hands. They also accused Cargello of borrowing nuns’ money without paying them back.
Cáceres, the judge, described the instances as “physical and psychological gender violence.”
— Despite the failures of the geographical solution to clergy sexual abuse, Catholic religious orders as the Oblates have a long record of using it.
Americae sive novi orbis, nova descriptio, 1573.
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
The Oblates have used the “geographical solution” before. One of their predator priests spent time in Mexico back in the Sixties.
Religion and Public Life: Argentina, Canada, France, Mexico, Paraguay, and the United States are among the countries where the Oblates have on the basis of the “geographic solution” to clergy sexual abuse.
Two weeks ago, Los Angeles Press published a report on the arrival of a Paraguayan Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate religious order, from his native country to Mexico.
At the time of the report, I’ve been in Mexico for at least six months. He’s got a low profile. There is no record of him participating as a priest in public functions carried out by the order.
After arriving to Mexico, Juan Rafael Fleitas López performed as an instructor at the schools where the Oblates train their so-called scholastics, which is how Catholic religious orders such as the Oblates call what other would be identified as seminarians: young students who aspire to become full members of the order and, in some cases, to become priests.
He was, in that regard, a pristine example of the so-called .geographic solution, which is an analyst how the forty-years-old clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church call the decision by some orders and even some diocesan bishops to move around priests with accusations of sexual abuse from one diocese to and another, if allowed, from one country to another.
One of the many examples of the “geographical solution” is, in Mexico and the United States, the way in which Norberto Rivera Carrera and Roger Michael Mahony, moved around from one country to the other and back again, Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, who at some point was point aptly called by the media in the native state of Puebla – a state-wide shame.
Norberto Rivera first sent Nicolas Aguilar Rivera (no family relationship with the Cardinal) from Tehuacán, 260 kilometers or 160 miles East of Mexico City, in the state of Puebla, to Los Angeles, California, during his first stint as bishop. Roger Mahony was, at the time, the almighty cardinal and archbishop of the largest Catholic diocese in the United States, with more than three million souls under his care.
Tehuacán, Puebla, East of Mexico City.
Aguilar Rivera was some sort of early revelation of the depth of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Mexico back in the late 1980s, when this issue was kept concealed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and both the Mexican government and media.
Since I was able to move around from Tehuacán, a mid-size metro area in the Central state of Puebla, Mexico, to Los Angeles, California, and then back to Mexico, Aguilar is one of the most notable super-predators in the Mexican Catholic Church. Far from his crimes, both Norberto Rivera and Roger Mahony, provided the perfect settings and cover up for his actions.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid almost $13 million as compensation. Although only Aguilars victims in that district of the U.S. Catholic Church received the monies.
Victims for the hundreds
There is no official information as if some payments were made by the Mexican dioceses of Tehuacán, Puebla, or Mexico City, which had, at some point in time competence over Aguilars performance as a priest in Mexico, although he is known that some of his received some of his victims some sort of compensation as a way to prevent the scandal brought by the fact that Cardinal Rivera was called to testify in California, as they could be seen in this transcript of his declaration from 2007.
Back in 2007, U.S. and Mexican media estimated Aguilars victims as at least ninety minors. I’ve repeatedly challenged that number, but there’s no reason to believe his word, since he was able to move around between both countries.
In Mexico, he was able to move officially between at two least Catholic dioceses: Tehuacán and Mexico City, although the last reports about his active life, from the mid to late aughts, about duties performing as a priest in the State of Mexico, the Mexican state surrounding Mexico City, which has had the largest number of separate dioces since the early 1990s.
Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop emeritus of Mexico City and Mario Delgado, current leader of the ruling party Morena in Mexico and alumn of NXIVM, 2012.
Because of the .geographical solution, Aguilar was able to find new unsuspecting victims, every time his bosses in the Catholic hierarchy decided the spin of the wheel of fortune, giving him a new chance as even priest if he was not ever appointed as pastor of a parish after Mahony received him with a temporary appointment back in 1987.
It was only in 2009, more than 20 years after the first accusations against Aguilar emerged, that Pope Benedict XVI expelled him from the priesthood. Only then, the Mexican Catholic bishops publicly admitted that Aguilar was a predator sex. Although there was no official admission as to the number of his victims in either Mexico or the United States, Mexican newsmagazine Proceso estimated them in .more than a hundred minors.
And even if apologies have been issued by the three reigning Popes as to the extent and consequences of clergy sexual abuse, and many leaders of the Catholic Church mimic the reigning Pope-s rhetoric on the issue, at a global scale, the fact: there is an impulse to move priests with accusations of different types of sexual misconduct as a way to give them a second, third, or fourth chance in the exercise of the priesthood, with little or not for the potential consideration of risk of moving.
The fact that I rushed to publish my findings as to the potential destination of Juan Rafael Fleitas López as an associate priest in the parish of St. Mary Magdalene in Tequisistlán, Oaxaca, was to prevent new abuses.
It was necessary since it is no record of a current active interest of the Mexican Catholic hierarchy on addressing the issue, as it proved by the fact that less than half the Mexican dioceses have set up a commission to prevent abuses, as it proved last week on these pages.
Even more, since there is no indication that the current Mexican federal government will pursue the accusations made by survivors, their friends, and advocates back in 2017.
Changing of the guard
In that regard, my sources on the issue tell me that Fleitass appointment fell to Tequisistlán fell apart, although he spent time there in March, when other parishes managed by the Oblate order had changes of the pastors serving them. The most recent of such changes at the diocese of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, was March 4th.
The changing of the guard happened at San Pedro Martir Quiechapa, as told by the entry at the Oblates official Facebook account that appears immediately after this paragraph or here.
After that, on March 23rd, the Oblates had a change in management at the parish of Christ Our Lord and Savior, at the diocese of Iztapalapa in Eastern Mexico City, as told by this entry from the same official Facebook reported immediately after this paragraph.
So, this is the season when the Oblates shuffle their priests from one parish or work to another. This is a healthy practice that forces priests and other religious personnel to confront new challenges and figure out new ways to do their work. It is not these regular changes that constitutes the practice of the .geographic solution to the issue of clergy sexual abuse.
Moreover, the Oblates are not new at using the .geographical solution to move around the priests and religious brothers who have faced accusations of sexual abuse. There is a long record of that order moving around priests and religious brothers from one of their provinces to another, to either cover up for the sexual abuse already perpetrated by some of them or as some sort of preventative measure, when one higher figures out that something is wrong with one of their subordinates in one of their provinces.
Even if Bishop is not seen as an accurate representation of whatever has happened as far as the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church on a global scale, since it has been a clear, even if undesired bias for the information coming from the English-speaking Catholic world, in their pages it is possible to find information that accurately depicts how, at least in the English- andspeaking Spanish-speaking Catholic worlds, the .geographical solution has been used by the Oblates and many other Catholic religious orders to move around priests with accusations of sexual misconduct.
More than Sixty Oblates
In that regard, Bishop Accountability has identified in one of its pages a minimum of 59 Oblates priests accused of clergy sexual abuse in U.S. and Canadian dioceses. On the top of that, in the Spanish-speaking pages of the same website there is information about one more Oblate, Luis Sabarre, originally from the Philippines but acting as a priest in the archdiocese of Mendoza, Argentina.
Also, there is information about at least two other members of this religious order, Gustavo Ovelar and Francisco Bareiro. The story linked above, the first of this series on the Oblates, mentions Bareiro and the impact of the accusations on him have. Both Ovelar and Bareiro are Argentine nationals. The Paraguayan newspaper La Nación described them back in 2016 as they are hiding out in Paraguay. That newspaper mentioned the fact that they were accused in 2014 of sexual assault.
A second Spanish-speaking page referenced at Bishop Accountability details how up until 2020, the Oblates kept their silence regarding the whereabouts of Ovelar and Bareiro.
What is worse. The English-speaking database of Bishop Accountability added data recently about the abuse perpetrated by French Oblates Edouard Meillieur and Johannes Rivoire in French and English-speaking missions in Canada going all the way back to the 1950s. Both are also representatives of the “geographical solution” as practiced by the Oblates.
In the green circle, Paraguayan Oblate priest Juan Rafael Fleitas López at a ceremony in Paraguay.
It is noticeable that the statement issued by the Canadian province of the Oblates seems to be aware of the need to use the right words when talking about the pain brought by members of the order to their victims and the communities they were supposed to be serving.
The statement issued by the leader of the Oblates in Canada, Father Ken Thorson, reads “the Oblates” recognize the tragic legacy of clergy abuse and are sincerely committed to support the Inuit Peoples who advocate for truth, justice, healing and reconciliation.
How could it be that if the Canadian Oblates seem to be aware of the “tragic” consequences of the .geographic solution, used by the French and Canadian provinces of that order back in the 20th century, the Mexican and Paraguayan leaders of the same orders are so willing to put the Mexican faithful at risk of being abused by Juan Rafael Fleitas López?
That is the saddest aspect of the institutional neuroses affecting the Catholic Church nowadays.
Predator Priest
What is worse, in the English-speaking database available at Bishop Accountability, it is possible to find information about one predator priest moving from the United States to the very same diocese of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, where the leaders of the province of the Mexican province tried to reinstate Fleitas López as they preside with the blessing of bishop Crispín Ojeda Márquez, the former auxiliary and none other than Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera.
I used the term “predator priest” knowingly and accurately. Bishop Accountability renders a short bio of Donald L. Stavinoha as he was killed back in 2007 but convicted in 1988, although the Texas authorities released him in 1991.
It is not clear if he assaulted or abused somebody at Tehuantepec, Mexico. We know, through a story published back in 1992 by Texan newspaper The Houston Chronicle, that I spent some time there between the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Jose de Jesús Clemente Alba Palacios was the bishop of Tehuantepec.
Oddly enough, Alba Palacios resigned his position as bishop of Tehuantepec back in 1970, when he was only 60 years old. Pope Paul VI appointed him auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Oaxaca, a strange move for a Roman Catholic bishop. Was it because of them then were issues related to abuse in Tehuantepec? God only knows.
As I am typing this story there is no official news about the destination of Juan Rafael Fleitas López. I know his appointment at Tequisistlán, diocese of Tehuantepec, fell apart, but there is no warranty that the leaders of the Oblate order in Mexico will not try to send him to any of his other parishes.
The only thing I know, for sure, is that Fleitas Lopez will not go back to be a priest at parish the Oblates have in Tijuana, Baja California. Although parish is in Mexico, it is not for the Mexican Oblates to decide who goes there. It is the Oblates of the United States who manages that parish as a “mission territory” in Mexico (see here and here too).
If Fleitas Lopez did something, it would be the Oblates in the United States, and under the laws of the United States would be liable. How lucky is the Mexican Catholic faithful of Tijuana, protected by U.S. Laws…
(Editor’s note: Although there has been considerable scholarship focused on LGBTQ community and advocacy in D.C., there is a deficit of scholarship focused on LGBTQ religion in the area. Religion plays an important role in LGBTQ advocacy movements, through queer-affirming ministers and communities, along with queer-phobic churches in the city. This is the final installment of a three-part series exploring the history of religion and LGBTQ advocacy in Washington, D.C. Visit our website for the previous installments.)
Six sisters gathered not so quietly in Marion Park, Washington, D.C. on Saturday, October 8, 2022. As the first sounds of the Women’s March rang out two blocks away at 11 am, the Sisters passed out candles to say Mass on the grass. It was their fifth annual Lavender Mass, but this year’s event in particular told an interesting story of religious reclamation, reimagining a meaningful ritual from an institution that seeks to devalue and oppress queer people.
The D.C. Sisters are a chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an organization of “drag nuns” ministering to LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities. What first began as satire on Easter Sunday 1979 when queer men borrowed and wore habits from a production of The Sound of Music became a national organization; the D.C. chapter came about relatively late, receiving approval from the United Nuns Privy Council in April 2016. The D.C. Sisters raise money and contribute to organizations focused on underserved communities in their area, such as Moveable Feast and Trans Lifeline, much like Anglican and Catholic women religious orders.
As Sister Ray Dee O’Active explained, “we tend to say we raise funds, fun, and hell. I love all three. Thousands of dollars for local LGBTQ groups. Pure joy at Pride parades when we greet the next generation of activists. And blatant response to homophobia and transphobia by protest after protest.” The Lavender Mass held on October 8th embodied their response to transphobia both inside and outside pro-choice groups, specifically how the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 intimately affects members of the LGBTQ+ community.
As a little history about the Mass, Sister Mary Full O’Rage, shown wearing a short red dress and crimson coronet and veil in the photo above developed the Lavender Mass as a “counterpart” or “counter narrative” to the Red Mass, a Catholic Mass held the first Sunday of October in honor Catholics in positions of civil authority, like the Supreme Court Justices. The plan was to celebrate this year’s Lavender Mas on October 1st at the Nuns of the Battlefield Memorial, located right across the street from the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, where many Supreme Court Justices attend the Red Mass every year.
As Sister Mary explained, this year “it was intended to be a direct protest of the actions of the Supreme Court, in significant measure their overturning of reproductive rights.”
Unfortunately, the October 1st event was canceled due to heavy rain and postponed to October 8th at the recommendation of Sister Ruth Lisque-Hunt and Sister Joy! Totheworld. The focus of the Women’s March this year aligned with the focus of the Lavender Mass—reproductive rights—and this cause, Sister Mary explained, “drove us to plan our Lavender Mass as a true counter-ritual and protest of the Supreme Court of who we expected to attend the Red Mass,” and who were protested in large at the Women’s March.
The “Lavender Mass was something that we could adopt for ourselves,” Sister Mary spoke about past events. The first two Masses took place at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation, right around the corner from the Supreme Court. The second Mass, as Sister Mary explained, celebrated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; “we canonized her.” Canonization of saints in the Catholic Church also takes place during a Mass, a Papal Mass in particular.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sisters moved the Mass outside for safety, and the third and fourth Masses were celebrated at the Nuns of the Battlefield Memorial. “It celebrates nuns, and we are nuns, psycho-clown nuns,” Sister Mary chuckled, “but we are nuns.” After the Mass, the Sisters would gather at a LGBTQ+ safe space or protest at the Catholic Church or Supreme Court. Although they often serve as “sister security” at local events, working to keep queer community members safe according to Sister Amore Fagellare, the Lavender Mass is not widely publicly advertised, out of concern for their own.
On October 8th, nine people gathered on the grass in a circle—six sisters, myself, and two people who were close with professed members—as Sister Mary called us to assemble before leading us all in chanting the chorus to Sister Sledge’s 1979 classic song “We Are Family.”
Next, novice Sister Sybil Liberties set a sacred space, whereby Sister Ruth and Sister Tearyn Upinjustice walked in a circle behind us, unspooling pink and blue ribbons to tie us together as a group. As Sister Sybil explained, “we surround this sacred space in protection and sanctify it with color,” pink for the choice to become a parent and blue for the freedom to choose not to be a parent but also as Sybil elaboration, in recognition of “the broad gender spectrum of people with the ability to become pregnant.” This intentional act was sought to fight transphobia within the fight for reproductive rights.
After singing Lesley Gore’s 1963 song “You Don’t Own Me,” six speakers began the ritual for reproductive rights. Holding out our wax plastic candles, Sister Sybil explained that each speaker would describe a story or reality connected to reproductive rights, and “as I light a series of candles for the different paths we have taken, if you recognize yourself in one of these prayers, I invite you to put your hand over your heart, wherever you are, and know that you are not alone – there is someone else in this gathered community holding their hand over their heart too.”
The Sisters went around the circle lighting a candle for those whose stories include the choice to end a pregnancy; those whose include the unwanted loss of a pregnancy or struggles with fertility; those whose include the choice to give birth, raise or adopt a child; those whose include the choice not to conceive a child, to undergo forced choice, or with no choice at all; those who have encountered violence where there “should have been tenderness and care;” and those whose reproductive stories are still being written today.
After each reading, the group spoke together, “may the beginnings and endings in our stories be held in unconditional love and acceptance,” recalling the Prayer of the Faithful or General Intercessions at Catholic Masswhere congregations respond “Lord, hear our prayer” to each petition. Sister Sybil closed out the ritual as Sister Mary cut the blue and pink ribbons between each person, creating small segments they could take away with them and tie to their garments before walking to the Women’s March. The Sisters gathered their signs, drums, and horns before walking to Folger Park together into the crowd of protestors.
At first glance, the Lavender Mass may appear like religious appropriation, just as the Sisters themselves sometimes look to outsiders. They model themselves after Angelican and Catholic women religious, in dress—they actively refer to their clothing as “habits,” their organization—members must also go through aspirant, postulant, and novice stages to be fully professed and they maintain a hierarchical authority, and in action. Like white and black habits, the Sisters all wear white faces to create a unified image and colorful coronets, varying veil color based on professed stage. Sister Allie Lewya explained at their September 2022 meeting, “something about the veils gives us a lot of authority that is undue,” but as the Sisters reinforced at the Women’s March, they are not cosplayers nor customers, rather committed clergy.
As such, the Sisters see their existence within the liminal spaces between satire, appropriation, and reimagination, instead reclaiming the basis of religious rituals to counter the power holders of this tradition, namely, to counter the Catholic Church and how it celebrates those in positions of authority who restrict reproductive rights. Similarly, the Lavender Mass is modeled after a Catholic or Anglican Mass. It has an intention, namely reproductive rights, a call to assemble, setting of a sacred space, song, chant, and prayer requests. It even uses religious terminology; each section of the Mass is ended with a “may it be/Amen/Awen/Ashay/aho.”
While this ritual—the Lavender Mass—appropriates a religious ritual of the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, this religious appropriation is necessitated by exclusion and queerphobia. As David Ford explains inQueer Psychology, many queer individuals retain a strong connection to their faith communities even though they have experienced trauma from these same communities. Jodi O’Brien builds on this, characterizing Christian religious institutions as spaces of personal meaning making and oppression. This essay further argues that the fact this ritual is adopted and reimagined by a community that the dominant ritual holder—the Catholic Church—oppressed and marginalized, means that it is not religious appropriation at all.
Religious appropriation, as highlighted in Liz Bucar’s recent book,Stealing My Religion (2022), is the acquisition or use of religious traditions, rituals, or objects without a full understanding of the community for which they hold meaning. The Sisters, however, fully understand the implications of calling themselves sisters and the connotations of performing a ritual they call a “Mass” as women religious, a group that do not have this authority in the Catholic Church. It is the reclamation of a tradition that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence understand because some were or are part of the Catholic Church.
Some sisters still seek out spiritual meaning, but all also recognize that the Catholic Church itself is an institution that hinders their sisters’ access and actively spreads homophobia and transphobia to this day. As such, through the Lavender Mass, the sisters have reclaimed the Mass as a tool of rebellion in support of queer identity.
Just as the Sisters recognize the meaning and power of the ritual of a Mass, along with the connotations of being a sister, the Lavender Mass fulfilled its purpose as a ritual of intention just as the Sisters fulfill public servants. “As a sister,” Sister Ruth dissected, “as someone who identifies as a drag nun, it perplexes people, but when you get the nitty gritty, we serve a similar purpose, to heal a community, to provide support to a community, to love a community that has not been loved historically in the ways that it should be loved.
The Sisters’ intentionality in recognizing and upholding the role of a woman religious in their work has been well documented as a serious parody for the intention of queer activism by Melissa Wilcox. The Lavender Mass is a form of serious parody, as Wilcox posits in the book:Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody(2018). The Mass both challenges the queerphobia of the Catholic Church while also reinforcing the legitimacy of this ritual as a Mass. The Sisters argue that although they would traditionally be excluded from religious leadership in the Catholic Church, they can perform a Mass. In doing so, they challenge the role that women religious play in the Catholic Church as a whole and the power dynamics that exclude queer communities from living authentically within the Church.
By reclaiming a tradition from a religious institution that actively excludes and traumatizes the LGBTQ+ community, the Lavender Mass is a form of religious reclamation in which an oppressed community cultivates queer religious meaning, reclaims a tradition from which they are excluded, and uses it to fuel queer activism (the fight for reproductive rights). This essay argues that the Lavender Mass goes one step further than serious parody. While the Sisters employ serious parody in their religious and activist roles, the Lavender Mass is the active reclamation of a religious tradition for both spiritual and activist ends.
Using the celebration of the Mass as it was intended, just within a different lens for a different purpose, this essay argues, is religious reclamation. As a collection of Austrian and Aotearoan scholars explored most recently in a chapter on acculturation and decolonization, reclamation is associated with the reassertion and ownership of tangibles: of rituals, traditions, objects, and land. The meaning of the Lavender Mass comes not only from the Sisters’ understanding of women religious as a social and religious role but rather from the reclamation of a physical ritual—a Mass—that has specific religious or spiritual meaning for the Sisters.
When asked why it was important to call this ritual a “Mass,” Sister Mary explained: “I think we wanted to have something that denoted a ritual, that was for those who know, that the name signifies that it was a counter-protest. And you know, many of the sisters grew up with faith, not all of them Catholics but some, so I think ‘Mass’ was a name that resonated for many of us.”
As Sister Ray said, “my faith as a queer person tends to ostracize me but the Sisters bring the imagery and language of faith right into the middle of the LGBTQ world.” This Lavender Mass, although only attended and experienced by a few of the Women’s March protests, lived up to its goal as “a form of protest that is hopefully very loud,” as Sister Millie Taint advertised in the Sisters’ September 2022 chapter meeting. It brought religious imagery and language of faith to a march for reproductive rights, using a recognized model of ritual to empower protestors.
The Lavender Mass this year, as always, was an act of rebellion, but by situating itself before the Women’s March and focusing its intention for reproductive rights, the Sisters’ reclaimed a religious ritual from a system of authority which actively oppressed LGBTQ+ peoples and those with the ability to become pregnant, namely the Catholic Church, and for harnessing it for personal, political, and spiritual power. In essence, it modeled a system of religious reclamation, by which a marginalized community takes up a religious ritual to make its own meaning and oppose the religious institution that seeks to exclude the community from ritual participation.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a longtime leader in the U.S. Catholic peace and justice movement, has died at the age of 94 in Detroit. He helped found Pax Christi and Bread for the World and was a war tax resister. He was also a survivor of sexual abuse in the church who was forced to resign in 2007 after he spoke out publicly in favor of an Ohio bill to extend the statute of limitations for cases of sexual abuse by clergy. In 2013, Bishop Gumbleton spoke to Democracy Now! about his work with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Well, what really opened my eyes was when a friend of mine — in fact, the person who started SNAP — came to me and asked me to intervene with the local bishop, because the priest who had abused her, and who had also abused other people that she was aware of, was still functioning. And I said, ’That’s impossible.’”
Amy Goodman: “You were the bishop of Detroit, and he was in Toledo.”
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Well, I was an auxiliary bishop in Detroit. But I was a friend of Barbara Blaine, the founder of SNAP, from decades — for decades. And when she came to me and told me this, I said, ‘Well, I’ll go see the bishop, and I’ll talk to him, and I’m sure he’s not going to continue to keep this covered up.’ Well, I went to see him, and he assured me, ’I’ll do something about it. I’ll take care of it.’ So I took him at his word, but nothing ever happened. And so, that made me realize that some of the, well, best bishops around were not dealing with this issue the way it needed to be dealt with. I mean, it just was terribly wrong to allow a priest to continue to function in a situation where he could abuse other children. And it turned out he was still abusing other people. And so, that” —
Amy Goodman: “The priest was.”
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Yes, and the bishop was allowing this to go on.”
That was Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who passed away Thursday at the age of 94.
“By integration of homosexuals into the religious community M.S.W. [The Mattachine Society of Washington], means acceptance of homosexuals as homosexuals not as candidates for change or ‘cure,’” said Franklin E. Kameny, the founder of the Washington Mattachine Society.
More than 10 years before the United Church of Christ’s General Synod accepted a resolution encouraging UCC congregations to welcome lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and six years before the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. was founded, Kameny brought together members of the Mattachine Society and 11 clergymen from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities around the Capital. The conference, held at American University on March 22, 1965, marked a critical moment in which Washingtonian clergy committed to advocate on behalf of LGBTQ individuals.
The result was a more than 50-year partnership between Washingtonian clergy members and LGBTQ individuals that continued through the AIDS crisis, the founding of open and affirming congregations, and far-right Christian movements in the late 2010s and 2020s. The need for religious and spiritual meaning and community has existed as long as LGBTQ communities, but traditionally, the historical narrative of queerness and religion has been driven by how religious leaders and communities have inflicted trauma and harm on queer members. This narrative is valid and acknowledges how religious communities and people have hurt LGBTQ folks but fails to acknowledge how queer people were instrumental in forming inclusive communities and how some religious leaders were key players in the LGBTQ rights movement.
The Mattachine Society was originally founded in Los Angeles by activist Harry Hay to protect and advocate for the rights of gay men. The Society published a monthly periodical, One: The Homosexual Viewpoint, which released its first issue focused on religion in December 1960 titled “Homosexual, Servant of God.” Just one year later Kameny and Jack Nichols, a 23-year-old native Washingtonian, founded the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW).
It wouldn’t be long before Kameny and MSW members began thinking critically about their community’s spiritual needs and how they could partner with local clergy members, since their faiths were largely responsible for public perception and discrimination against gay men at the time. Nichols stepped forward to create the Washington Area Council on Religion and Homosexual, a subcommittee of the MSW. The following year Kameny and Nichols organized the conference between Washingtonian faith leaders and MSW members. The first meeting in March set the groundwork for the second on May 24, 1965, where the group founded the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual.
The constitution of the new organization was formally adopted on Dec. 6, 1965. The purpose of this organization is, as the constitution notes, “to effect the integration of the individual homosexual into the religious life of the community be alleviation of the estrangement and alienation, which now exists between the homosexual and the religious community.”
In 1967, Nichols and Reverend Lorey Graham, chaplain at American University, appeared on WJZ-TV Baltimore to answer questions about “The Second Largest Minority.” Both answered questions from the host and the audience, explaining that homosexuality was not a pathology. “The significance of this show lies in the fact,” Nichols wrote in The Homosexual Citizen, “that for the first time, a distinguished Methodist clergyman on the East Coast has publicly associated himself with the civil libertarian aims of the homophile movement and has made his views known to a wider television audience.”
Founding new communities
But this partnership wasn’t confined to television. These conversations in the 1960s laid the groundwork for Washingtonian faith communities to found specific internal organizations and ministries for LGBTQ individuals. In 1971, Dignity/Washington — a chapter of the Catholic LGBTQ organization Dignity USA — was established by six people in the first-floor cafeteria of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Sr. Jeannine Gramick, Patrick Mills, Fr. Greg Slamone, Joe Cicero, and another individual saw a need for a queer Catholic ministry and started the chapter. The group became a chapter in 1972 and met at the Newman Center on GWU’s campus. Several of these founders also established the LGBTQ Catholic New Ways Ministry just across the river in 1977.
When Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at St. Matthew Cathedral on Saturday, Oct. 6, 1979, he was greeted by 30 members of the Dignity/Washington chapter holding a banner reading, “Dignity Gay and Lesbian Catholics Welcome You.” Integrity/Washington, a local chapter of the gay and lesbian Episcopal organization Integrity USA, was founded shortly thereafter.
In 1983, Westminister Presbyterian became one of the first 13 Presbyterian congregations to form the More Light Network, a ministry for the LGBTQ community. The D.C. church had been working with the LGBTQ community since the early 1960s, openly sharing that they “fought for the inclusion of and end of discrimination against the LGBTQ+ family. We do not just accept but celebrate the gifts God has given through our varied sexual orientations and gendered understandings.”
Many churches in D.C. also responded to the call to become “Open and Affirming.” In 1985, the United Church of Christ’s General Synod accepted a resolution encouraging UCC congregations across the country to “Declare Themselves Open and Affirming” after a period of dialogue and reflection. In 1987, the First Congregational United Church of Christ voted to become one of the first Open and Affirming congregations in the DMV area. First Congregational was also one of the first 15 certified Open and Affirming Congregations in the United States.
Within these congregations, LGBTQ individuals were welcomed and celebrated. In 1982, gay activist L. Page “Deacon” Maccubbin and his life partner Jim Bennett were one of the first couples to celebrate a Holy Union and were the second couple to be registered as domestic partners in Washington, D.C.
More denominations followed suit, but in the late 1970s, LGBTQ individuals established their own faith communities. One whole church was established — the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. — solely to serve the LGBTQ community in 1970. Members first met in Rev. J.E. Paul Breton’s home on Capitol Hill the following year. The wider MCC would become the largest LGBTQ-affirming mainline Protestant denomination, with churches spreading across the country through the 1970s and 1980s. Following suit, Bet Mishpachah was founded by members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community as Washington’s only Egalitarian synagogue in 1975, now identified as “a congregation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, trans, and queer Jews.”
Thus begins D.C.’s LGBTQ religious history in the 1960s onwards; the history of LGBTQ-affirming religious organizations and ministries prior to the 1960s is extremely limited and their exclusion here does not mean they did not exist in D.C. before these first two conferences at American University in 1964. But despite these pieces of communion between the LGBTQ community and religious organizations in the 1970s and early 1980s, the former would face significant backlash at the hands of religious leaders in the mid to late 1980s with the 1976 Gay Pride Day and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic.
