Pope Francis: The Surprising Yet Flawed Ally
During the 2013 Conclave after Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, there was much speculation as to how the new Pope would lead the embattled Church. With religion in decline, the times changing, and Catholicism’s reputation in tatters due to the institution’s unwillingness to report clergy who sexually abused children, the Church needed a new direction. Pope Francis was that change. At a time when the world needed a champion for kindness and humility, he was there. And for the many Catholics who wanted to see the church modernize, Francis delivered. In Pope Francis, refugees and the poor had no greater friend. For LGBT people, he was a surprising yet flawed ally. More than anything, he was simply a good man.
When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was announced as Pope Francis, he became the first Pope from Latin America and the first non-European Pope in 1,200 years. The commentators during CBS’s live broadcast of the Papal announcement accurately predicted his Papacy would be focused on aiding the poor and the downtrodden. Bergoglio distinguished himself as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires by eschewing the luxuries associated with the title. He lived in a small apartment, cooked his own food, and took public transportation when he travelled. He visited the poor so often that he later came to be known in those neighborhoods as the “slum Pope.” In 2001, Bergoglio visited a hospice in Buenos Aires to kiss and wash the feet of 12 AIDS patients. In 2008, he did the same for 12 drug addicts at a Buenos Aires rehabilitation center.
The CBS commentators also noted Bergoglio’s choice of Papal Name: Francis. According to Francis, as the vote in the Conclave began turning in his favor, Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes hugged and kissed him and said, “Don’t forget the poor,” which made him think of Saint Francis of Assisi, a friar who led a life of poverty in service of the needy. At age 76, Francis knew his window of time to leave his mark on the Church would be limited, so he began immediately. When the doors opened and Pope Francis appeared in public for the first time on the Saint Peter’s Basilica balcony, he signaled to the world he would be a different kind of Pope before he even uttered a word. He was not adorned with the colorful red Papal mozzetta, nor did he wear a gold cross. Instead, Francis wore the simple white cloak of an ordinary priest with the same iron cross he had as a Cardinal around his neck.
Three months after his elevation to the Papacy, Francis held a press conference aboard the papal plane following his first visit abroad for Brazil’s World Youth Day. He was asked by a reporter about a “gay lobby” within the Vatican. Pope Francis’s response included five words that forever changed the Catholic Church’s relationship with LGBT people: “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”
Six months later, Francis sparked more controversy when he told Reverend Antonio Spadaro, editor in chief of the Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica that the Church had become obsessed with homosexuality, abortion, and birth control — a drastic departure from Pope Benedict, who’d made his opposition to these issues the core of his Papacy.
“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” Francis said. “We have to find a new balance, otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.” Francis also clarified that his prior “who am I to judge” comment wasn’t about gay men becoming priests as had been speculated. Rather, he was speaking of gay, lesbian, and bi people in general. “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”
Source: Catholic News Agency.
These statements may seem anodyne today, but they made massive waves at the time, moving the Catholic Church away from its socially conservative image and toward something more progressive. Pope Francis became the unlikeliest of LGBT icons. Francis’s pro-LGBT remarks were all the more shocking due to his past efforts to block a 2010 bill legalizing same-sex marriage in his native Argentina while he was still a Cardinal. LGBT people thought they would be getting more of the same with Pope Francis. Instead, he became one of their most powerful defenders. The Advocate named Pope Francis their Person of the Year in December 2013, writing that while Francis still opposed same-sex marriage, his speech on World Peace Day couldn’t have been more different from Pope Benedict’s the year prior. Benedict had said same-sex marriages “actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society,” and were “an offense against the truth of the human person.” Meanwhile, Francis spoke of how humanity should love one another the same way God loves humanity:
“In Christ, the other is welcomed and loved as a son or daughter of God, as a brother or sister, not as a stranger, much less as a rival or even an enemy. In God's family, where all are sons and daughters of the same Father. […] All men and women enjoy an equal and inviolable dignity. All are loved by God.”
Although Francis staked out more liberal positions on LGBT issues than any pope in history, he was far from a perfect ally. He never endorsed same-sex marriage, nor did he allow gay or bi men to serve as priests. Even Francis seemed to realize that despite the power that came with being Pope, the institution of the Catholic Church constrained just how far he could go. This is in part because the Church is seeing most of its growth from Africa, whose Catholic population is far more socially conservative on LGBT matters. At times, Francis’s statements, while well-meaning, also seemed to cause more confusion and mixed signals than anything else.
In a December 2014 interview with Argentine newspaper La Nación, Pope Francis reflected on what he’d told the bishops in attendance for the Synod on the Family (a council convened to decide matters of Church doctrine and administration):
“The synod addressed the family and the homosexual persons in relation to their families, because we come across this reality all the time in the confessional: a father and a mother whose son or daughter is in that situation. This happened to me several times in Buenos Aires. We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their son or daughter.”
In the same interview, however, Francis explained that the topic of same-sex marriage never came up. When the Synod on the Family’s interim report was released, it stated that “homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer.” Conservative bishops distanced themselves from the report, saying that it was just a working document. But no matter how much they tried to separate themselves from the issue, they could not change the fact that Pope Francis wanted a place for the LGBT Community in the Church.
When Francis decreed that the clergy could bless same-sex couples in December 2023, African Cardinals issued a public rebuke the following month. Francis later clarified that his decree concerned the blessing of LGBT people, not organizations, and conceded that it would not be enforced in Africa, saying the continent’s “culture does not accept it.”
Pope Francis also addressed the topic of trans people’s place in the Church, something his predecessors never had to confront. His transgender policy was a mixed bag. While he made comments condemning gender-affirming surgery and what he called “gender ideology”, his actions tell a different story. On November 9, 2023, the Vatican decreed that trans people could be baptized and serve as godparents and witnesses at weddings. Despite his deep ideological differences, Francis’s instincts, reflected in his policies, consistently embraced the humanity in everyone and sought ways to include them in the Church. Were his comments a way of pacifying conservative Catholics? Was he trying to have it both ways? We’ll never know for sure, but there is no doubt that Pope Francis did more for trans people than all his predecessors combined.
Pope Francis had his flaws. He was a man of contradiction when it came to LGBT people’s role in the Church — a contradiction that continued until the last year of his life. On May 20, 2024, he held a closed-door meeting at the Italian Bishops' Conference. When the bishops brought up the topic of allowing gay and bi men into the clergy, Francis reiterated his position that this would not be allowed and then joked, “there's too much faggotry already” in the seminaries. The Vatican issued an apology for Francis’s remarks, but weeks later, during a meeting with Roman priests, Francis reiterated, “There is an air of faggotry in the Vatican.”
These comments should have damaged Pope Francis’s reputation with the LGBT community. Yet the reaction was more bemused than anything else, a clear sign he was viewed as a man whose heart was in the right place, in spite of his crass remarks. It certainly helped that the year before, Pope Francis called for homosexuality to be decriminalized worldwide. “Being homosexual is not a crime,” he said. “It’s not a crime. Yes, but it’s a sin. Fine, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime. It’s also a sin to lack charity with one another, and being homosexual is not a crime. It’s a human condition.”
This is one consistent theme of Pope Francis’s public comments about LGBT issues. While Francis says homosexuality is a sin, he deemphasizes its seriousness by mentioning a sin far greater. In a February 2024 interview with an Italian magazine, Pope Francis said, “No one is scandalized if I give a blessing to an entrepreneur who perhaps exploits people, which is a very serious sin. Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual — this is hypocrisy […] I don't bless a ‘homosexual marriage’, I bless two people who love each other, and I also ask them to pray for me.”
According to journalist María Solana, when Pope Francis died, his possessions included “a wooden cross, the rosary he used for prayer, and very little else.” His Papacy began as social media was transforming humanity into nihilists driven by tribal hatred of the other. Pope Francis showed there was a different path — one of love and acceptance. He demonstrated time and again that true wealth does not come from hoarding money or accumulating material goods — it comes from treating others with kindness and respect and helping those in need. And Francis exemplified a virtue increasingly rare in today’s algorithm-fueled culture wars: the decency of respectful coexistence with those who don’t share all of your values. In contrast with the Church’s past and the political extremism of today, Francis showed that it is possible to have deeply held beliefs, even in a position of great authority, without demonizing people over differences.
Through his words and actions, Pope Francis made the world a better, more pluralistic, more neighborly place. Catholicism still has a far way to go, but LGBT people are no longer pariahs in the Church, and their voices will continue to grow stronger in the Vatican in the decades to come. And we have Pope Francis to thank.
Published May 22, 2025
