Vatican City, Sep 6, 2025 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, celebrated Mass at the Church of the Gesù on Saturday for LGBT pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee of Hope.
An Italian lay association organized the international pilgrimage, which included a morning Mass celebration inside the mother church of the Society of Jesus in Rome and a St. Peter’s Basilica Holy Door pilgrimage in the afternoon.
More than 1,000 pilgrims from around the world attended the Mass concelebrated by approximately 30 priests, including American Father James Martin, SJ, who had met with Pope Leo XIV in a Sept. 1 private audience at the Vatican.
Several people, including religious brothers and sisters, waved rainbow-colored fans to keep cool inside the packed church and some wore shirts with a phrase from 1 John 4:18, “nell’amore non c’e timore” (“there is no fear in love”), during the Mass.
In his homily, Savino underscored the inherent dignity of every person and the need to “restore dignity to those who had been denied it.”
“We are all a pilgrim people of hope and we want to leave this celebration more joyful and hopeful than ever,” Savino said during his homily. “We have to go forward, convinced that God loves us [with] a unique and unrepeatable love … unconditional love.”
“In that awareness there is the foundation of all hope,” he said.
Reflecting on the selected Mass readings and Gospel for the day, Savino said St. Paul’s writings in the New Testament teach us that “a small step” in the midst of great human limitations may be “more pleasing to God than the outwardly correct life” of those who do not experience trials in life.
“We all have to convert, that is, we turn, we look in the opposite direction than before. The Acts of the Apostles documents this experience as defining and definitive,” he said.
“Truly I am realizing that each of us, you here present, your family members, your brothers and sisters, we pastors and disciples of the Lord — each of us has had in our lives to accept or to reject a living truth,” he added.
Asking the Lord to “deliver us freely from any polemical or ideological temptation, from any preconceived temptation based on prejudice,” the Italian bishop spoke of the need for “Peter and the Apostolic College to put living truth before dead truth,” a reference to the pope and bishops today.
The Sept. 6 Mass concluded with rounds of loud applause and great emotion. Family members and friends sang the recessional hymn and hugged each other as the bishop and concelebrating priests processed out of the main part of the basilica, led by a pilgrim holding a rainbow-colored cross.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, people with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies … must be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
The catechism also states that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”
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About geometry, and parsing St. Thomas More:
“Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will James Martin’s duplicity make it round? And if it is round, will James Martin’s duplicity flatten it? No, I will not sign” (Robert Bolt’s “A Man for all Seasons,” 1960).
To say—”people with deep-seated homosexual tendencies…must be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”–does not square the circle, either, for blessing incongruous couplings as “couples,” or justify cross(!)-dressing Calvary with a rainbow banner.
And, to think that James Martin’s duplicity started so simply, when another Martin (Luther) likewise embraced the still-binary (!) bigamy of Henry VIII and the German elector Philipp of Hesse…strange bedfellows.
Life is short and sweet. Evangelization and conversion are ongoing and never-ending opportunities. We need to pray for the wellbeing of fellow pilgrims on journey.
Gradualism: Here we come!
Are we as a welcoming Church endorsing disordered behavior or seeking to convert to Christ? LGBT attendees received the Holy Eucharist.
“Bishop Savino said St Paul’s writings in the New Testament teach us that ‘a small step’ in the midst of great human limitations may be ‘more pleasing to God than the outwardly correct life’ of those who do not experience trials in life. We all have to convert, that is, we turn, we look in the opposite direction than before. The Acts of the Apostles documents this experience as defining and definitive”.
Savino’s remarks [specifically a small step] are right out of Amoris Laetitia, where Francis says in allusion to reception of the Eucharist for those in ‘irregular unions’ – this can be a first step. Although does reception of the Eucharist when one is given the impression of accommodation of their behavior going to inspire conversion?
The Eucharist is not magic. There must be at least an interior desire to reform one’s life to Christ and his commandments. Unless of course there is a different Christ being taught at the Vatican other than the Christ revealed to Paul and the Apostles.
We read: “LGBT attendees received the Holy Eucharist.”
Apparently the abyss of receiving the Eucharist sacrilegiously applies only to conscientious individuals, but not to a privileged category such as the tribal LGBTQ aggregate…
“To respond to this invitation [the Eucharist as the Real Presence, CCC 1374] we must ‘prepare ourselves’ for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: ‘Whoever therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drink judgment upon himself.’ Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion” (CCC 1385).
Far be it from any of us to judge another (“who am I to judge?”)! But, as for “judgment upon himself,” what of the beckoning clerics at the head of the line? And, what of the roadmap discerned by St. John Chrysostom: “The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lampposts that light the path.”
Whatever?
Reception of the Blessed Sacrament when one is in an adulterous or fornication relationship, which is the case for those who are sexually active outside of the bond of a sacramental marriage between a biological man and a biological woman, is objectively always a serious sacrilege – and the engagement in such a sexual relationship is an intrinsic evil. To ignore or violate this perennial teaching of the Catholic Faith is not a small step – it is a large step that will send one to hell, if not repented of – and ceased altogether. Our failure to re-iterate this truth in today’s world, where relativism reigns supreme, makes prelates, clergy, and teachers in the Church complicit in the deadly sins of so many. Enough with the emotionally-laden, inclusive language. Tell it like it is. Think of the number of souls confirmed in deadly and sacrilegious sin by this so-called LGBT+ Jubilee weekend – not just those who attended – but all who viewed the support of the Vatican for its events via the media. How much longer do we think Our Lord will stand idly by and allow this loss of souls to continue?
The issue isn’t treating gays rudely or dismissively. No one says that’s okay.
The issue is accepting sin as normal.
These pilgrims actually identify as “the gay community.”
They march under banners proclaiming, celebrating — even advocating for — their sins.
This is the doing of James Martin, yes, but also of so many more in the Dark and demonic Vatican. Including and especially Bergoglio himself.
*This* is the legacy of the most evil and destructive pope in history.
Pope Leo must now set about to restore sanity — and sanctity. May God bless and sustain him.
I think if Leo was genuinely interested in addressing the issue of homosexuality in the church, this vile display would never have taken place.
No one has been “denied dignity,” and God’s love is not unconditional in the sense that I can flagrant sin sexually and expect God to look favorably on that. Catering to the LGBT lobby is profoundly sinful.
“. . . the outwardly correct life of those who do not experience trials in life”.
Who would those “those” be?
This guy needs to get out more.
Yikes! I don’t feel peaceful about this. Am I misreading it? To me, this sounds like the organizers are trying to deny that homosexual acts are sinful. Am I committing a sin of judgmentalism to draw this conclusion? I am a musician so I have plenty of gay friends, including sexually active and celibate gay friends. I don’t try to “preach”
to them, but I pray for them. I’m not sure how to interpret this occurrence.
We read: “Yikes…. this sounds like the organizers are trying to deny that homosexual acts are sinful.” Dear Sharon, please consider that rather than simple-minded denial, this “occurrence” almost completes the insurgency of past decades and especially the past twelve years.
Three points:
FIRST, the game is to claim “validation” (!), first in the secular world through the oxymoron of gay “marriage,” and then by the tribal gang-raping of the Church in Rome itself with the position (so to speak) that this staged occurrence is unopposed, and therefore consensual, and therefore the new normal in moral theology and human relations.
Now all that’s needed is the paperwork…
SECOND, for this mere formality we might look to the post-“synodal” Study Group #9 which is charged to conjure “theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.” But how can one argue any longer with the “spontaneous, informal, non-liturgical” blessing of irregular couples, as “couples” (!), under the kissing car[di]nals Fiducial Supplicans, now that it’s non-spontaneous, formal, and liturgical—and even sacrilegious? A done deal with needed fingerprints! One is almost reminded how in revolutionary France, the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was likewise hijacked—as a dance platform for a nude prostitute. The issue here is much broader than even LGBTQ…
THIRD, over half a century ago, Georges Bernanos said it this way:
“The modern world will shortly no longer possess sufficient spiritual reserves to commit genuine evil. Already . . . we can witness a lethal slackening of men’s conscience that is attacking not only their moral life, but also their very heart and mind, altering and decomposing even their imagination . . . The menacing crisis is one of INFANTILISM.” (Interview with Samedi-Soir, Nov. 8, 1947, cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence” [Ignatius, 1996], p. 457, caps added).
Wha we need is an Inquisition by the Laity of homoheretics, starting with James Martin SJ.
Theologians and Cannon Lawyers can probably argue the nuances of this action and come up with some level of apologetics to create a definition of acceptance for this action. As an average pew buffer, let me provide a “theologically uneducated view” of what this action shouts…Sodomy, and multiple other perversions are, not just O.K., but have the support and encouragement of the Roman Catholic Church.