On Saturday, September 6, 2025, the streets of Rome witnessed an unprecedented scene: more than 1,400 LGBTQ Catholics and their families from around 20 countries gathered for a Holy Year pilgrimage, marking a historic moment of visibility and hope within the Catholic Church. The event, woven into the fabric of the Church’s Jubilee holy year, was not just a journey of faith—it was a celebration of a new, if still tentative, level of acceptance after decades of feeling unwelcome.
The pilgrimage, organized by La Tenda di Gionata (The Tent of Jonathon), an Italian association advocating for greater inclusivity among the faithful, and supported by groups such as DignityUSA and Outreach from the United States, was the first of its kind to be officially listed in the Vatican’s Jubilee calendar. While Vatican organizers quickly clarified that this listing did not amount to formal endorsement or sponsorship, the symbolic weight was unmistakable. For many participants, simply being included in the official program was a deeply meaningful sign of progress.
Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian bishops conference, presided over a packed Mass at Chiesa del Gesu, the main Jesuit church in Rome. His homily resonated with the crowd, earning a sustained standing ovation. “The Jubilee was the time to free the oppressed and restore dignity to those who had been denied it,” Savino declared, according to the South China Morning Post. “Brothers and sisters, I say this with emotion: It is time to restore dignity to everyone, especially to those who have been denied it.”
The pilgrimage was as much about visibility as it was about faith. Participants, carrying a rainbow-colored cross, processed up the main road to the Vatican and walked through the Holy Door into Saint Peter’s Basilica—an act that, for many, symbolized finally being recognized as part of the Church’s family. Yveline Behets, a 68-year-old transgender woman from Brussels, undertook a remarkable 130-kilometer journey along the ancient Via Francigena pilgrimage route with about 30 fellow LGBTQ pilgrims to reach Rome. “One should not misuse the word ‘welcome’,” Behets told AFP. “We are not just some outsiders who are welcomed sometimes, or more regularly—we are part of the same family.”
For others, the pilgrimage was a moment to reflect on the long journey from exclusion to cautious acceptance. Marianne Duddy Burke of DignityUSA recalled her experience 25 years ago during the last Holy Year, when a group of LGBTQ pilgrims from the U.S. were detained as a potential threat to the celebrations. “To now be invited to walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica fully recognized as who we are and the gifts we bring to the church, and that we have both our faith and our identities combined, is a day of great celebration and hope,” she said, as reported by the Associated Press.
This sense of hope was palpable at a vigil service held the night before the pilgrimage at the Jesuit church. The service featured testimonies from gay couples, the mother of a trans child, and a moving reflection by Italian priest Fausto Focosi. “Our eyes have known the tears of rejection, of hiding. They have known the tears of shame. And perhaps sometimes those tears still spring from our eyes,” Focosi shared. “Today, however, there are other tears, new tears. They wash away the old ones. And so today these tears are tears of hope.”
Much of the change in atmosphere is credited to the legacy of Pope Francis, who died in April 2025. From the earliest days of his papacy in 2013, Francis made headlines with his now-famous response to a question about gay clergy: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” This simple, human statement broke with decades of formal denunciation and opened the door to a more welcoming approach, even as Church doctrine remained unchanged. In 2023, Francis went further, declaring that “being homosexual is not a crime” and allowing priests to bless same-sex couples—moves that were both celebrated and fiercely contested within the global Church.
John Capozzi, a pilgrim from Washington, D.C., attending with his husband, Justin del Rosario, said Francis’s attitude had drawn him back to the Church after years of feeling alienated during the AIDS crisis. “There was that feeling like I wasn’t welcome in the church,” Capozzi told the Associated Press. “Not because I was doing anything, just because I was who I was. It was this fear of going back in because of the judgment.” But Francis’s insistence that the Church was open to “todos, todos, todos”—everyone—changed everything for Capozzi. “With Pope Francis, I was able to come out and say, ‘Hey, you know, I am Catholic and I’m proud of it and I want to be part of the church.’”
Yet the path to full inclusion remains fraught. Pope Leo XIV, elected in May 2025, has so far signaled continuity with Francis’s approach but has not gone further. At a special Jubilee audience for all pilgrim groups in Rome, Leo made no specific mention of LGBTQ Catholics. His position, initially questioned due to earlier remarks critical of the “homosexual lifestyle,” has since become clearer. After meeting with American Jesuit advocate Rev. James Martin, Leo encouraged continued advocacy for LGBTQ Catholics. “I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people,” Martin told the Associated Press.
Still, Leo has stated that marriage remains, in his view, a union between a man and a woman, though he will not reverse Francis’s decision allowing blessings for same-sex couples. This stance has left many LGBTQ Catholics and their families feeling hopeful but aware that “a lot of obstacles remain,” as Hugo, a 35-year-old pilgrim from Quebec, put it to AFP. “There are fears and a sort of misunderstanding when it comes to the life that homosexuals lead. If everybody got to know everyone else, I think a lot of barriers would come down.”
Beatrice Sarti, a 60-year-old Italian mother accompanying her gay son, echoed the need for further change, particularly in the hearts and minds of everyday Catholics and clergy. “Many of our children no longer go to church... because they are made to feel that they are wrong,” she said. “That absolutely needs to change. The first thing to do is train educators, the seminarians, the priests and the bishops, starting at grassroots. It is a very long process.”
For now, the pilgrimage stands as a powerful sign of progress—a day when LGBTQ Catholics walked through the Holy Door not as outsiders, but as part of the family. The journey toward true equality within the Church is far from over, but for those who marched through Rome, it was a day when tears of hope washed away years of exclusion.