Italian Bishop Urges the Catholic Church to Restore the Dignity of LGBTQ+ People
The first national conference of Catholic pastoral workers dedicated to ministering to LGBTQ+ people was held in Rome. Francesco Savino, Vice President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, stated at the meeting that the church must radically change its approach to queer parishioners, New Ways Ministry reports.
The event, titled “Good Practices in Pastoral Ministry with Homo-Affective and Transgender People,” took place on September 4 at the Jesuit General Curia. The conference brought together about two hundred participants and ten bishops from different regions of the country to share experiences on integrating and assisting LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families.
In his speech, Francesco Savino, Bishop of the Diocese of Cassano all’Jonio, noted that interacting with LGBTQ+ people during the Catholic Jubilee was a true revelation for him that completely changed his views. “I have converted. Óscar Romero used to say: ‘The people converted me.’ We must allow ourselves to be converted by events, by the signs of the times, people, stories, and faces,” he shared.
Savino emphasized the urgent need to restore the dignity of LGBTQ+ people, which they had been denied, partly due to church preaching. The bishop called for a shift from dry “organizational” work to “generative” pastoral practice based on live communication and relationships. “The Church becomes credible again only when it becomes flesh,” Savino added, stressing that the paradoxical inconsistencies between statements and actual actions alienate believers.
The bishop separately addressed the issue of homosexual priests who are forced to hide their identity out of fear of condemnation. He called on the church to help them overcome this isolation, emphasizing that the most important thing is faithfulness to the vows made at ordination, regardless of sexual orientation.
In conclusion, Savino condemned politicians’ attempts to pit civil and social rights against each other, calling both fundamental. According to him, returning to such political manipulations threatens to push society back to the darkest periods of European history.
