King Charles III on Wednesday said a transgender-inclusive ban on so-called conversion therapy in England and Wales is among the British government’s legislative priorities.

“My government will bring forward a bill to speed up remediation for people living in homes with unsafe cladding [Remediation Bill] and a draft bill to ban abusive conversion practices [Draft Conversion Practices Bill],” said Charles in his King’s Speech that he delivered in the British House of Lords.

The government writes the King’s Speech, which outlines its legislative agenda. The British monarch delivers it at Parliament’s ceremonial opening.

“Conversion practices are abuse, and the government will deliver the manifesto commitment to bring forward a trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices,” said the government in an addendum to the speech.

Then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s government in 2018 announced it would “bring forward proposals to end the practice of conversion therapy in the U.K.”

Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government in 2022 said it would support a ban that did not include gender identity. The decision sparked outrage among British advocacy groups, and prompted them to boycott a government-sponsored LGBTQ+ conference that was ultimately cancelled.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party ahead of the 2024 elections included a conversion therapy ban in its manifesto. Charles delivered the King’s Speech against the backdrop of growing calls for Starmer to resign after the Labour Party lost more than 1,000 council seats in local and regional elections that took place on May 7.

Stonewall, a British advocacy group, on April 30 said the government “has failed to meet its own timeline to publish a draft bill to ban conversion practices.”

“We should not have to wait any longer,” said Stonewall CEO Simon Blake in his group’s statement. “Conversion practices are abuse. LGBTQ+ people do not need fixing or changing. They need to hear and feel that government is going to protect their safety and dignity. Not at some random date in the future. No more delays.”

The European Commission on Wednesday said all European Union countries should ban so-called conversion therapy.

The recommendation comes weeks after the European Parliament voted in favor of prohibiting the widely discredited practice across the EU. More than 1.2 million people signed a campaign in support of the ban that ACT (Against Conversion Therapy) LGBT launched in 2024 through the EU’s European Citizens Initiative framework.

“We warmly welcome today’s commitment from the European Commission to a recommendation on ending conversion practices, an important step forward for LGBTI rights across Europe,” said ILGA Europe in a statement.

Seven EU countries — Belgium, Cyprus, France, Malta, Norway, Portugal, and Spain — have banned conversion therapy outright.

Greece in 2022 banned the practice for minors. German lawmakers in 2020 passed a law that prohibits conversion therapy for minors and for adults who have not consented to undergoing the widely discredited practice.

ILGA Europe said the European Commission’s recommendation “highlights how much work remains to be done.”

“Ending conversion practices cannot stop at symbolic commitments or fragmented national approaches,” stressed the advocacy group. “We need coordinated EU action, proper training for professionals, and survivor-centered support systems that recognize the serious harm these practices cause.”

“More than one million people supported the European Citizens’ Initiative calling for change,” added ILGA Europe. “The message is clear: conversion practices are not therapy or belief, they are a form of violence that Europe can and should end.”

The Polish government on Tuesday said it will recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other European Union states.

The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg last November ruled in favor of a same-sex couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage. Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court in March reaffirmed the decision.

The couple, who lives in Poland, brought their case to Polish courts in 2019. The Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday apologized to same-sex couples for the “years of rejection and humiliation” they suffered because Poland did not recognize their relationships.

“I hope that after the ruling of the (European Union) court and the Supreme Administrative Court, we will also find swift and necessary legislative solutions in parliament,” said Tusk, according to TVP, Poland’s public broadcaster.

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a member of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition party, who supports LGBTQ+ rights, said his city will begin to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other EU countries before the national government does. Tusk, for his part, said this recognition is “no way a path to the possibility of adoption.”

Any marriage recognition bill that MPs pass will go to President Karol Nawrocki, who is a socially conservative Catholic, for his signature.

“We welcome these decisions and announcements with hope,” said the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Polish LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “The true confirmation of these words, however, will be the signing of the aforementioned regulation and the actual certificates held in the hands of those Polish couples who were forced to fight for their dignity and justice before Polish courts.”

Karolina Gierdal, a lawyer with Lambda Warszawa, another Polish LGBTQ+ rights organization, criticized Tusk’s adoption comments.

“It is sad that the LGBT community is once again presented as a threat, as if society needs reassurance that adoption rights ‘won’t happen.’” she told TVP. “The reality is that children are already being raised in same-sex families in Poland, and maintaining the current legal situation means reducing the level of legal protection available to those children.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office on Saturday.

Magyar’s center-right Tisza party on April 12 defeated then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition. Vice President JD Vance less than a week before the election traveled to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, and urged Hungarians to support Orbán.

Orbán had been in office since 2010. He and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown.

The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, on April 21 struck down the statute.

The EU while Orbán was office withheld upwards of €35 billion ($41.26) in funds to Hungary in response to concerns over corruption, rule of law, and other issues.

Hungarian lawmakers in March 2025 passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ+ events.

Upwards of 100,000 people last June defied the ban and marched in Budapest’s annual Pride parade.

“Congratulations to [Péter Magyar] on becoming prime minister of Hungary,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on X.

“This Europe Day, our hearts are in Budapest,” she added. “The hope and promise of renewal is a powerful signal in these challenging times.”

“We have important work ahead of us,” noted von der Leyen. “For Hungary and for Europe, we are moving forward together.”

A report the Vatican released on Tuesday acknowledges LGBTQ+ Catholics have felt isolated within the church.

The report, which the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod’s Study Group 9 released, includes testimony from two married gay Catholics from the U.S. and Portugal.

“Regarding the resistances — limiting ourselves to those emerging from the lived experiences shared with us — we wish to highlight the following: the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families, not only in society but also within the church; this is often linked to the temptation to hide in a ‘double life,'” reads the report. “Within this problematic outlook lie the positions expressed in the pressure to undergo reparative therapies or, even more gravely, in the simplistic advice to enter the sacrament of marriage.”

“At the root of both the emerging openings and the persisting resistances, it seems possible to identify a difficulty in coordinating pastoral practice and the doctrinal approach. Other testimonies received by our study group from believers with same-sex attractions further confirm how arduous it is for individuals and Christian communities to reconcile “doctrinal firmness” with “pastoral welcome,'” it adds.

The report appears to criticize so-called conversion therapy. It also states “every person, first and foremost, is singular, irreducible, irreplaceable, and original” and “this is the meaning of the Biblical-theological theme of the human being, male and female, created in the image and likeness of God.”

The National Catholic Reporter notes “a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson” the Vatican commissioned “to study ‘controversial’ issues that Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality raised wrote the report.

Francis in 2023 launched the multi-year synod to examine on ways to reform the church.

The Argentine-born pontiff died in April 2025. Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, succeeded him.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday met with Leo at the Vatican. The meeting took place against the backdrop of increased tensions between the U.S. and the Holy See over the Iran war.

LGBTQ+ Catholic groups largely welcome report

LGBTQ+ Catholic groups welcomed the report; even though it will not change church teachings on homosexuality, marriage, and gender identity.

“It was a really bold choice to make LGBTQ issues — or homosexuality — one of the case studies,” Brian Flanagan, a senior fellow at New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ+ Catholic organization, told the Los Angeles Blade on Wednesday during a telephone interview.

Flanagan is also the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Catholic Theology at Loyola University in Chicago.

“They (the study group) could have punted and said something easier,” he said. “Instead, they’re putting what was frankly one of the hottest issues leading up to and after the Synod and addressing it more head on.”

New Ways Ministry Executive Director Francis DeBernardo in a statement described the report as a “breath of refreshing air, the first acknowledgment that LGBTQ+ issues were taken seriously by the three-year global consultation of all levels of the church.”

“By establishing mechanisms and recommendations to continue dialoguing with LGBTQ+ people, the report is a significant step forward in the church’s process to become a more welcoming place for its LGBTQ+ members,” he said.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ+ Catholic organization, in her own statement said the report “demonstrates a welcome humility and openness to learning from the People of God about people’s lives and faith journeys.”

“It is clear that the study group members understand that the doctrines of the church undermine the deep relationship with God that many LGBTQ+ people have, or try to have, and that this needs to be corrected,” she said. “Church officials have decades of testimony from people who have found their sexual orientation or gender identity to be a blessing and a gift, and their relationships to be sacred. To see this reality reflected and respected in this document is a long-awaited positive step.”

Duddy-Burke added the report largely ignores “the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people.” She further notes it “provides few concrete recommendations and proposes no doctrinal changes.”

“Rather, it calls for dialogue, encounter, and communal theological reflection to shape how the Catholic Church moves forward in addressing doctrine and pastoral practice,” said Duddy-Burke. “The paradigm shift repeatedly called for in this report is a significant and very welcome change. Experience, especially of those most impacted, must be key to developing dogma.”

Ukrainian lawmakers have advanced a proposed new Civil Code that does not contain legal protections for same-sex couples.

The Kyiv Independent reported the proposal passed on its first reading on April 28 by a 254-2 vote margin.

The newspaper notes more than two dozen advocacy groups in a statement said some of the proposed Civil Code’s provisions “contradict European standards” and “violate Ukraine’s commitments under its EU accession process.”

“The most worrying provisions are those that make it impossible for a court to recognize the existence of a family relationship between people of the same sex,” the statement reads. “This overturns the already established case law on this issue, and closes the only legal avenue that allows partners to somehow protect their rights in individual cases.”

“Moreover, the draft completely ignores the obligations that Ukraine should have already fulfilled as part of its accession to the EU, as it lacks provisions that would allow people of the same sex to register their relationships,” it adds.

“The provisions also stipulate that all marriages concluded by people who have changed their gender automatically become invalid,” the statement further notes. “This is not just stagnation in the field of human rights or lack of progress on the path to European integration, but an actual setback in the legal sphere.”

Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ+ advocacy group, in an April 28 Facebook post said the new Civil Code “is a step back on upholding the rights of women and the LGBT+ community in Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples. 

The Ukrainian Supreme Court on Feb. 25 recognized Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk — a gay couple who has lived together since 2013 and married in the U.S. in 2021 — as a family. Ukraine the day before marked four years since Russia began its war against the country.

The European Union’s top court on Tuesday struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law.

Hungarian MPs in 2021 approved Act LXXIX of 2021.

“It shall be forbidden to make accessible to persons who have not attained the age of 18 years advertisement that depicts sexuality in a gratuitous manner or that propagates or portrays divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality,” it reads.

The European Commission in 2022 challenged the law. Sixteen EU countries — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden — joined the lawsuit. The European Parliament also supported it. Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for his part, said his government would defend the law.

The EU Court of Justice heard the case in 2024.

A press release that announced the ruling on Tuesday said Hungary “acted in breach of EU law.”

“The court finds, for the first time, a separate infringement of Article 2 TEU (Treaty on European Union), which lists the values on which the (European) Union is founded and which are common to all the Member States,” it reads. “The aspects of the amending law targeting content which portrays or promotes deviation from the self-identity corresponding to the sex assigned at birth, gender reassignment, or homosexuality constitute a coordinated series of discriminatory measures which are in breach, in a way that is both manifest and particularly serious, of the rights of non-cisgender persons — including transgender persons — or non-heterosexual persons, as well as the values of respect for human dignity, equality and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.”

“Consequently, that law is contrary to the very identity of the (European) Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails,” notes the press release.  “Hungary cannot validly rely on its national identity as justification for adopting a law which is in breach of the values referred to above.”

The Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQ+ rights group, said the ruling “is a milestone for the protection of human rights in the European Union, and it is also a historic victory for LGBTQI people in Hungary.”

The court issued its ruling nine days after Péter Magyar ousted Orbán in Hungary’s elections.

Orbán took office in 2010.

He and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown that included laws that banned Pride events and other public LGBTQ+ events. (Upwards of 100,000 people last June denied the prohibition and marched in Budapest’s annual Pride parade.)

“Those amendments constitute a particularly serious interference with several fundamental rights protected by the (EU) Charter (of Fundamental Rights), namely the prohibition on discrimination based on sex,” notes the court’s press release.

The EU since Orbán took office has withheld upwards of €35 billion ($41.2 billion) in funds to Hungary in response to concerns over corruption, rule of law, and other issues. Magyar has said he will work with Brussels to unfreeze the money.

ILGA-Europe Deputy Director Katrin Hugendubel urged Maygar’s government to repeal the law.

“With this ruling, the CJEU (The EU Court of Justice) is confirming what we have been saying for six years,” said Hugendubel. “There is now no excuse for the Commission not to require Hungary to quickly withdraw the law. Hungary cannot enter a post-Orbán era without repealing this legislation, including the Pride ban.”

“If Péter Magyar truly aims to be pro-EU, he must place this at the top of his agenda for his first 100 days in office, as an essential part of his EU facing reforms,” added Hugendubel.

The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ+ rights in their country.

Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Los Angeles Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.

Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ+ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)

Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”

ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.

ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”

• Marriage equality for same-sex couples

• Depathologization of trans identities

• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples

“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”

“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.

Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”

Seven LGBTQ+ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.

Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.

The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ+ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ+ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.

“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.

Bisexual US skier wins gold

Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.

More than 40 openly LGBTQ+ athletes are competing in the games.

Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.

Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ+ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.

“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking ‍about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”

More than 40 openly LGBTQ+ athletes are expected to compete in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that open on Friday.

Outsports.com notes eight Americans — including speedskater Conor McDermott-Mostowy and figure skater Amber Glenn — are among the 44 openly LGBTQ+ athletes who will compete in the games. The LGBTQ+ sports website also reports Ellis Lundholm, a mogul skier from Sweden, is the first openly transgender athlete to compete in any Winter Olympics.

“I’ve always been physically capable. That was never a question,” Glenn told Outsports.com. “It was always a mental and competence problem. It was internal battles for so long: when to lean into my strengths and when to work on my weaknesses, when to finally let myself portray the way I am off the ice on the ice. That really started when I came out publicly.”

McDermott-Mostowy is among the six athletes who have benefitted from the Out Athlete Fund, a group that has paid for their Olympics-related training and travel. The other beneficiaries are freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy, speed skater Brittany Bowe, snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick, alpine skier Breezy Johnson, and Paralympic Nordic skier Jake Adicoff.

Out Athlete Fund and Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood on Friday will host a free watch party for the opening ceremony.

“When athletes feel seen and accepted, they’re free to focus on their performance, not on hiding who they are,” Haley Caruso, vice president of the Out Athlete Fund’s board of directors, told the Los Angeles Blade.

Four Italian LGBTQ+ advocacy groups — Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano — have organized the games’ Pride House that will be located at the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan.

Pride House on its website notes it will “host a diverse calendar of events and activities curated by associations, activists, and cultural organizations that share the values of Pride” during the games. These include an opening ceremony party at which Checcoro, Milan’s first LGBTQ+ chorus, will perform.

ILGA World, which is partnering with Pride House, is the co-sponsor of a Feb. 21 event that will focus on LGBTQ+-inclusion in sports. Valentina Petrillo, a trans Paralympian, is among those will participate in a discussion that Simone Alliva, a journalist who writes for the Italian newspaper Domani, will moderate.

“The event explores inclusivity in sport — including amateur levels — with a focus on transgender people, highlighting the role of civil society, lived experiences, and the voices of athletes,” says Milano Pride on its website.

The games will take place against the backdrop of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s decision to ban trans women from competing in women’s sporting events.

President Donald Trump last February issued an executive order that bans trans women and girls from female sports teams in the U.S. A group of Republican lawmakers in response to the directive demanded the International Olympics Committee ban trans athletes from women’s athletic competitions.

The IOC in 2021 adopted its “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations” that includes the following provisions:

• 3.1 Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations.

• 3.2 Provided they meet eligibility criteria that are consistent with principle 4 (“Fairness”, athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.

• 3.3 Criteria to determine disproportionate competitive advantage may, at times, require testing of an athlete’s performance and physical capacity. However, no athlete should be subject to targeted testing because of, or aimed at determining, their sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.

The 2034 Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City. The 2028 Summer Olympics will occur in Los Angeles.

The College of Cardinals on Thursday elected Cardinal Robert Prevost from Chicago as the Catholic Church’s next pope.

Leo XIV’s election took place less than three weeks after Pope Francis died at Casa Santa Marta, his official residence at the Vatican. The conclave to choose his successor began on Wednesday.

Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago in 1955, is the first American pope.

Leo XIV was bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023. Francis made him a cardinal in 2023

“We salute the appointment of the new Pope Leo XVI,” said the U.S. Embassy in Peru on X. “A celebration for the world’s Catholics, and a joy especially shared between the American people and the Peruvian people. From Chicago to Chiclayo.”

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), a gay man of Peruvian descent, also congratulated Leo XIV.

“As a Catholic and Peruvian American, I wish Pope Leo XIV strength as he steps into his role as a global and spiritual leader,” said the California Democrat on X. “He has demonstrated that he believes in justice for the poor and immigrants. May his leadership reflect these ideals as he spreads peace across the world.”

As a Catholic and Peruvian American, I wish Pope Leo XIV strength as he steps into his role as a global and spiritual leader. He has demonstrated that he believes in justice for the poor and immigrants. May his leadership reflect these ideals as he spreads peace across the world.

— Congressman Robert Garcia (@RepRobertGarcia) May 8, 2025

Francis died on April 21 at Casa Santa Marta, his official residence at the Vatican. The conclave to choose the Argentine pontiff’s successor began on Wednesday.

The Vatican’s tone on LGBTQ+ and intersex issues softened under Francis’s papacy, even though church teachings on homosexuality did not change.

Francis, among other things, described laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations as “unjust” and supported civil unions for gays and lesbians. Transgender people were among those who greeted Francis’s coffin at Rome’s St. Mary Major Basilica before his burial on April 26.

The New York Times reported Leo XIV in a 2012 speech to bishops specifically cited “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children” when he said Western media and popular culture has promoted “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel”

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a group that represents LGBTQ+ Catholics, traveled to Rome for the conclave.

She told the Los Angeles Blade in a text message from St. Peter’s Square shortly after Leo XIV’s election that she “heard him speak” last October and “found him thoughtful and gently challenging.”

“[He] hasn’t said a lot since early 2010s. [I] hope he has evolved,” said Duddy-Burke. “His commitment to synodality is a hopeful sign.”

Her group later issued a statement.

“This election appears to signal a willingness to continue building on Pope Francis’s commitment to synodality and social justice,” said DignityUSA. “We pray that the needs of those whom our church has historically marginalized, including LGBTQ+ people and their families, will continue to be heard and addressed by the Vatican and other church leaders.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ+ Catholic organization, in a statement said there is “a special pride in having the first pope from the United States, his longtime ministry in Latin America most likely had an equally formative influence on his spirituality and approach to church issues.” DeBernardo, however, criticized Leo XIV’s 2012 comments.

“We pray that in the 13 years that have passed, 12 of which were under the papacy of Pope Francis, that his heart and mind have developed more progressively on LGBTQ+ issues, and we will take a wait-and-see attitude to see if that has happened,” he said.

“We pray that as our church transitions from 12 years of an historic papacy, Pope Leo XIV will continue the welcome and outreach to LGBTQ+ people which Pope Francis inaugurated,” added DeBernardo. “The healing that began with ‘Who am I to judge?’ needs to continue and grow to ‘Who am I, if not a friend to LGBTQ+ people?'” 

DignityUSA agreed.

“We express concern with the former Cardinal’s statements — as reported in the New York Times — in a 2012 address to bishops, where he stated that Western news media and popular culture fostered ‘sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel’ including the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ and ‘alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.'” We note that this statement was made during the papacy of Benedict XVI, when doctrinal adherence appeared to be expected,” said the organization in its statement. “In addition, the voices of LGBTQ people were rarely heard at that level of church leadership. We pray that Pope Leo XIV will demonstrate a willingness to listen and grow as he begins his new role as the leader of the global church.”