Organizers and supporters reluctant to discuss planned LGBT jubilee day in Rome

National Catholic Register, Dec 11, 2024 / 17:35 pm

An Italian association of LGBT Christians has said it has received official Vatican approval to make a pilgrimage to next year’s jubilee in Rome, although the Vatican’s jubilee organizers say they are neither supporting nor opposing the event while the figures behind it are declining to comment. 

The association called La Tenda di Gionata (“Jonathan’s Tent”) asked its members to “save the date” — Sept. 6, 2025, at 3 p.m. — and invited “all associations and groups dedicated to supporting LGBT+ individuals and their families to join us as we officially cross the Holy Door of the jubilee at St. Peter’s Basilica.”

In the evening, the LGBT pilgrims, their parents, and pastoral workers have been invited to a Mass at the Jesuit Church of the Gesù, the historic baroque church in central Rome, celebrated by the vice president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Francesco Savino. The Gesù will also host a prayer vigil for the pilgrims the evening before. 

Jubilee 2025, which begins with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24 and runs until Jan. 6, 2026, is expected to attract 32 million pilgrims to Rome from around the world who will be able to receive a plenary indulgence and attend a variety of spiritual and cultural events. 

Agnese Palmucci, an official spokesman for the jubilee, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, that the La Tenda di Gionata association proposed making a pilgrimage to the Holy Door and so it has been “included in the general calendar as a pilgrimage, along with all the other pilgrimages that other dioceses will make.” 

“It is not a jubilee event sponsored or organized by us,” Palmucci continued. “It is a pilgrimage organized by this association which, like the other dioceses, bodies, and associations, will make the pilgrimage as they wish.”

The Italian daily Il Messaggero called the planned event an “absolute novelty, unthinkable until a few years ago, the fruit of pastoral care that extends to groups usually considered on the margins.” 

Francis DeBernardo, editor of the LGBT advocacy website New Ways Ministry, said the news touched his heart “deeply” as he remembered the resistance to homosexuality in Rome during the 2000 jubilee. “While 2025’s event may seem like a small step, when compared with how the Vatican reacted to the presence of gay people in Rome during 2000, we can see what a sea change has taken place in terms of responding to LGBTQ+ people,” he wrote on New Ways’ website. “This development did not happen overnight but has many small steps which paved the way for it.” New Ways has been denounced by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office for causing confusion on sexual morality among the Catholic faithful.

Writing in the Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Luisella Scrosati called the planned events a “defeat not only of the moral doctrine of the Church but also of its pastoral activity” and noted that these associations that promote homosexuality as an identity and won’t tolerate being corrected “will enter St. Peter’s.” 

Scrosati further noted that members of these associations “were created by God male or female” but are being “told the great lie that their tendency, completely disharmonious with what is expressed by their body, is not disordered.” 

Il Messaggero reported that the proposal was met with “internal resistance” but that Pope Francis had “accepted the idea of ​​Father Pino Piva, a Jesuit from Bologna, who has always been dedicated to the rainbow world.” 

The Register asked Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni if the pope was supporting the association’s planned events, but he did not respond. 

Italian media also said Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna and head of Italy’s bishops; Archbishop Rino Fisichella, organizer of the holy year; and the superior general of the Jesuits, Father Arturo Sosa, have all given the initiative their positive support. 

Asked by the Register via email to confirm that he supported the event and whether he was concerned it would further deepen divisions in the Church, Zuppi said: “The question should be put to the organizers of the jubilee at the Holy See.” When asked again whether or not he supported the initiative, he did not reply.

The rector of the Church of the Gesù was also approached for comment, but he said he would not give interviews over the telephone. The Register then emailed him a set of questions to which he did not answer. 

La Tenda di Gionata also did not reply to general questions about the event, including the pressing question of whether same-sex couples will receive nonliturgical blessings in the Church of the Gesù, as allowed by the 2023 Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans. 

(Story continues below)

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Asked whether or not the jubilee organizers were nevertheless supporting the event, Palmucci said: “In reality, we do not support every association or entity that proposes and makes its pilgrimage. It’s not a matter of supporting or not. We do not give our support to anyone; we do not give an approval; we do not give a judgment on an event. So each diocese, each association, each entity that wants to pass through the Holy Door asks us, and we put it in the calendar; but it is an event that’s, let’s say, autonomous.” 

He continued: “Since as a dicastery we manage the entrances to the Holy Doors, if an association comes to us and asks to be able to pass through the Holy Door on that date, what we do is simply see if that date is free.” If it is free, he said they register the group and its numbers of pilgrims so they “can pass through the Holy Door on that day. That’s all we do.” 

Palmucci said the jubilee office only really manages “the big jubilee events,” which number 36 in total, and “those are the ones that are in the [main] calendar.” As a follow-up, the Register asked Palmucci if there are any groups the organizers would not permit to pass through the Holy Door, but he did not respond.  

Scrosati said that with this jubilee event, “false mercy will enter triumphantly into St. Peter’s, with the blessing of the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops.” 

Quoting Matthew 24:15, she asked: “Could this be the new ‘abomination of desolation’ standing in a holy place?”

The Register asked Cardinal Gerhard Müller as well as two African bishops opposed to such events — Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda, Cameroon, and Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, Nigeria — if they would like to comment on the plans but they had not responded by press time. 

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.