National Catholic Register, Dec 11, 2024 / 17:35 pm (CNA).
An Italian association of LGBT Christians has said it has received official Vatican approval to make a pilgrimage to next year’s jubilee in Rome, although the Vatican’s jubilee organizers say they are neither supporting nor opposing the event while the figures behind it are declining to comment.
The association called La Tenda di Gionata (“Jonathan’s Tent”) asked its members to “save the date” — Sept. 6, 2025, at 3 p.m. — and invited “all associations and groups dedicated to supporting LGBT+ individuals and their families to join us as we officially cross the Holy Door of the jubilee at St. Peter’s Basilica.”
In the evening, the LGBT pilgrims, their parents, and pastoral workers have been invited to a Mass at the Jesuit Church of the Gesù, the historic baroque church in central Rome, celebrated by the vice president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Francesco Savino. The Gesù will also host a prayer vigil for the pilgrims the evening before.
Jubilee 2025, which begins with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24 and runs until Jan. 6, 2026, is expected to attract 32 million pilgrims to Rome from around the world who will be able to receive a plenary indulgence and attend a variety of spiritual and cultural events.
Agnese Palmucci, an official spokesman for the jubilee, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, that the La Tenda di Gionata association proposed making a pilgrimage to the Holy Door and so it has been “included in the general calendar as a pilgrimage, along with all the other pilgrimages that other dioceses will make.”
“It is not a jubilee event sponsored or organized by us,” Palmucci continued. “It is a pilgrimage organized by this association which, like the other dioceses, bodies, and associations, will make the pilgrimage as they wish.”
The Italian daily Il Messaggero called the planned event an “absolute novelty, unthinkable until a few years ago, the fruit of pastoral care that extends to groups usually considered on the margins.”
Francis DeBernardo, editor of the LGBT advocacy website New Ways Ministry, said the news touched his heart “deeply” as he remembered the resistance to homosexuality in Rome during the 2000 jubilee. “While 2025’s event may seem like a small step, when compared with how the Vatican reacted to the presence of gay people in Rome during 2000, we can see what a sea change has taken place in terms of responding to LGBTQ+ people,” he wrote on New Ways’ website. “This development did not happen overnight but has many small steps which paved the way for it.” New Ways has been denounced by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office for causing confusion on sexual morality among the Catholic faithful.
Writing in the Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Luisella Scrosati called the planned events a “defeat not only of the moral doctrine of the Church but also of its pastoral activity” and noted that these associations that promote homosexuality as an identity and won’t tolerate being corrected “will enter St. Peter’s.”
Scrosati further noted that members of these associations “were created by God male or female” but are being “told the great lie that their tendency, completely disharmonious with what is expressed by their body, is not disordered.”
Il Messaggero reported that the proposal was met with “internal resistance” but that Pope Francis had “accepted the idea of Father Pino Piva, a Jesuit from Bologna, who has always been dedicated to the rainbow world.”
The Register asked Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni if the pope was supporting the association’s planned events, but he did not respond.
Italian media also said Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna and head of Italy’s bishops; Archbishop Rino Fisichella, organizer of the holy year; and the superior general of the Jesuits, Father Arturo Sosa, have all given the initiative their positive support.
Asked by the Register via email to confirm that he supported the event and whether he was concerned it would further deepen divisions in the Church, Zuppi said: “The question should be put to the organizers of the jubilee at the Holy See.” When asked again whether or not he supported the initiative, he did not reply.
The rector of the Church of the Gesù was also approached for comment, but he said he would not give interviews over the telephone. The Register then emailed him a set of questions to which he did not answer.
La Tenda di Gionata also did not reply to general questions about the event, including the pressing question of whether same-sex couples will receive nonliturgical blessings in the Church of the Gesù, as allowed by the 2023 Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans.
Asked whether or not the jubilee organizers were nevertheless supporting the event, Palmucci said: “In reality, we do not support every association or entity that proposes and makes its pilgrimage. It’s not a matter of supporting or not. We do not give our support to anyone; we do not give an approval; we do not give a judgment on an event. So each diocese, each association, each entity that wants to pass through the Holy Door asks us, and we put it in the calendar; but it is an event that’s, let’s say, autonomous.”
He continued: “Since as a dicastery we manage the entrances to the Holy Doors, if an association comes to us and asks to be able to pass through the Holy Door on that date, what we do is simply see if that date is free.” If it is free, he said they register the group and its numbers of pilgrims so they “can pass through the Holy Door on that day. That’s all we do.”
Palmucci said the jubilee office only really manages “the big jubilee events,” which number 36 in total, and “those are the ones that are in the [main] calendar.” As a follow-up, the Register asked Palmucci if there are any groups the organizers would not permit to pass through the Holy Door, but he did not respond.
Scrosati said that with this jubilee event, “false mercy will enter triumphantly into St. Peter’s, with the blessing of the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops.”
Quoting Matthew 24:15, she asked: “Could this be the new ‘abomination of desolation’ standing in a holy place?”
The Register asked Cardinal Gerhard Müller as well as two African bishops opposed to such events — Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda, Cameroon, and Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, Nigeria — if they would like to comment on the plans but they had not responded by press time.
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.
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ONE common interpretation of those anomalies signaled, permitted, and enabled over the past 11 years is as an effort to align the Church within the One World Order. The Church of the Gesu event would be part of this overall abdication.
But, might ANOTHER interpretation be that the Synodality thing is a strategy to re-paradigm the apostolic Church as an open-door alternative more or less parallel to the more secularist One World Order? Is Synodality intended as an Anglican-ish sort of Via Media between the old-hat Church and ubiquitous social engineering under the dangerous alliance of democracy and ethical relativism?
The Anglican VIA MEDIA disinterred?
The last straw in NEWMAN’s conversion from the pretended Via Media came when the Anglican divines proposed a bishopric in Jerusalem–and didn’t care much that the targeted roundtable of Greek Orthodox, Jewish converts (actually, “not half a dozen”) and others were not at all on the same page. Wrote Newman: “The Anglican Church might have the Apostolic succession, as had the Monophysites; but such acts as were in progress led me to the gravest suspicion, not that it would soon cease to be a Church, but that it had never been a Church all along” (Apologia pro Vita Sua, Part V).
QUESTION: If the poorly defined and self-validating Synod on Synodality (say what?) is intended as a “walking together” Via Media standing apart from the One World Order (rather than lockstep within), then even this has been sabotaged. And, the disintegrated Anglican precedent is instructive, at least to backwardist non-amnesiacs.
The threatening “novelty” today is not against the triune nature of the Divinity as at Nicaea, but rather against the nature of Man–as now at the “rainbow world” Church of the Gesu.
Understandably so. I can only imagine what they have planned.
To find what might be planned—or maybe only blundered—the thing to watch closely is the June 2025 recommendations from Study Group #9: “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal [!], pastoral [!] , and ethical [!] issues.”
This in NOT to impugn Study Group #9 or any of its members, but rather to notice how the phrasing of some truths too often can inadvertently undermine other unmentioned truths.
In today’s graffiti culture, perhaps “theological” perspectives can be cautionary and open to other roundtable perspectives, such as the “anthropological” or even “biological” or meme-ological! That is, how to possibly fine-tune the sweeping study group stuff, but without giving to the Cardinal Radcliffes and Fr. Martins of the world an opening for proclaiming, say, LGBTQ exemptions from Veritatis Splendor? Or maybe a ordained deadconesses (etc.?) within a unisex priesthood? Or maybe this within a hermaphrodite (c)hurch [!]…as in no clear synodal distinction between the accountability[!] of the ordained Successors of the Apostles[!] as compared to the rest of us who are accountable to only the, yes, “universal call to holiness.”
Real shepherds don’t lead from behind.
I’m getting fed up with much of what comes out of this apostate Vatican. If you want a good reason for Catholics disaffiliating from the Church (and not to be confused with the faith as taught in the Catechism), then look at this pontificate.
In a nutshell, well said.
My question is : why don’t the shepherds of the Church support those who have left this lifestyle choice – ex homosexuals?
Or maybe some shepherds have turned into wolves?
Would the Vatican permit a group of self-proclaimed Satanists pass through the Jubilee Doors of St. Peter’s if they applied for such passage as other groups have done? Don’t be surprised by their answer.
Well, at one of the World Youth Days Francis admonished the young to “learn” from atheists. And he wasn’t talking about studying their fallacies of logic. He was talking about finding in them a source of wisdom.
Cardinal Zuppi (thought to be a “next pope” by many) and Archbishop Fisichella, and of course the Pontiff Francis, are men who are morally polluted, and who live to pollute the Catholic Church.
These men are witch-doctors of the apostasy.
Todos! Todos! Todos! are welcome to repent.
New Ways Ministry is the culture of death versus The Way, Truth and Life of Christ. Our earthly pilgrimage can choose the fruitless death of sin or the eternal life of union with the Triune God. We have no power to change the Perfect Word of God.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19
Interesting.
Bergoglio’s papacy is certainly innovative. I don’t ever recall seeing any other parishes do jubilees that celebrate mortal sins.
Now, since my main sin of adulthood has been to appreciate women a tad *too* much, this gay jubilation doesn’t do it for me. At all.
But if they celebrate, say, gluttony, or maybe sloth, I’ll be all over that.
I think I’ll talk to my pastor this weekend and see if we could have a parish celebration of the sin of gluttony some time soon.
Judging from his waistline, I daresay he might be agreeable.
Bergoglio certainly has changed things in the Church!
I am all in on the gluttony and sloth celebrations. Where do I sign up? Who’s bringing the food???? Not me… can’t go to the trouble – too busy doom scrolling on X.
Kate!
No worries! Remember, the party will be in honor of sloth too! So no one has to worry about working on food prep!
We’ll have it catered.
And we’ll make sure Bergoglio’s mug is on all the cakes!
“Lord, give me a love that conquers what prevents me from being”. Standard of the Gionata [Jonathan] Project.
La Tenda Gionata is the Jubilee arm of the Gionata Project org that acknowledges, promotes homosexuality. To be or not to be in Shakespearean. A distant Philip Morris’ Virginia Slims ad acclaimed young women, ‘You’ve come a long way baby’. Gays have indeed come an aeon away from the 2000 Jubilee. But those were the days of Pope John Paul II and CDF prefect Cdl Joseph Ratzinger. Thereafter Pope Benedict XVI and prefect Cdl Gerhard Muller. Then a sea change. 2013 and Pope Francis, who prophesied a new age, new epoch, a leap forward in time from the mustiness of old spaces, of doctrines destined for the Vat museum. We’ve arrived. Like it or not. A true and blue age of self discovery, better yet self invention. Italy’s bishops are led by Cdl Matteo Zuppi, head of social justice pro homosexual Sant’Egidio movement. May 2018, Cdl Zuppi happily contributed an essay to the Italian translation of Fr James Martin SJ’s homosexual manifesto Building a Bridge .
Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, said the news touched his heart ‘deeply’ as he remembered the resistance to homosexuality in Rome during the 2000 jubilee. Liberation. From where and from who? The Church of old time religion. From Jesus Christ its founder. Ironically, prophetically, dastardly however we may describe it, the Jesuit occupied Roman Church of the Gesù is headquarters for the abomination, players hesitant as waves start to ruffle.
Cdl Gerhard Muller, auspicious CDF commander persecuted finally summarily dispatched by Francis, noted for his reserve and great respect of authority has now spoken out vociferously as noted by essayist, NCReg editor Edward Pentin. Alarmed? Recalled again is the boyhood conviction formed on the mean streets of South Brooklyn, that if there were ever the moment that homosexuality were presumed a good by the Catholic Church, it would signal the onset of the reign of the Antichrist.
Where in South Brooklyn, Fr. Morello? I grew up in St. Saviour’s parish.
Deacon Sacred Heart and Saint Stephen’s adjacent to Red Hook. Later Our Lady of Angels.
Father, we were neighbors. I know two guys now in their mid 70’s who attended OLA in Bay Ridge.
By that time Deacon Peitler I was searching my vocation in life and was rarely in Brooklyn. Although we’re already friends.
Where in the revealed truths of our faith is there anticipation of a liberation, a joyous freedom, not from the ravages of sin, rather from the alleged rigidness, the sinfulness of holding fast to that revealed doctrine? Where does a pontiff in this conceived age of Aquarius find the rationale to condemn trans sex mutilation, same sex disorder, a sin antithetical to Christ and testimony of his Apostles, divorce and remarriage outside the Church.
Nevertheless, one who engages with and promotes its advocates and victims into a unified identification with Catholic Christianity absent of the requirement of recognition of that sin, the need for confession and repentance. That coupled with the duplicitous doctrine that conscience rather than revelation, hardship rather than heroic virtue rules? Is it that Mankind, the whole of Christianity required patience for two millennia for this new paradigmatic news to be revealed? Christ alone has revealed the truth. This new gospel is permitted to test the faithful because of widespread disobedience. Stand fast with his Gospel.
What would be positive if all these LGBQT+ organizations explained what they mean by “support”, virtually all those I am aware of, have had contact and discussions with it is complete approval and support of their life-style choice, that means “support”. So, if I say “I love you a a child of God, but dont approve of your lifestyle and do not believe it is truly Christian”, the answer is I hate, I don’t like and I don’t support. So I am the villan, the hater, yet I am the one called names, despised and verbally attacked in all manner of negative terms. So what do these groups, these people want from me and those like me who believe the chosen lifestyle they want me to “support” is antithetical and against Church and Christ teaching.
Giving voice to the voiceless was a daily mission of Jesus, his apostles, and his disciples.
Jesus brought the hope of salvation to the sinful by his death and resurrection. Let’s not confuse sin to being voiceless.
Gays voiceless? Really?
Where have you been?
You mean the “love” that does not know how to shut the hell up? Scripture promised that (unrepentant) homosexuals will have no voice much less place in the Kingdom of Heaven … and the Church is meant to be the seed and promise of that kingdom. The role of the Supreme Pontiff is to be Heaven’s ambassador on earth, not a forked tongue power player for the acclaim of the world.
It seems to my simple mind that there is good and there is evil. Christ suffered and died so that all may gain eternal life, if so desired. To accept Christ requires conversion, a conscious rejection of a sinful lifestyle. Conversion is the both the key and the door to salvation.
This attempt to justify sinful, aberrant lifestyles is nothing more than an overt effort to force Almighty God to accept the sin and grant eternal salvation to the unrepentant.
The Lord God blasted two ancient cities from the face of the Earth for the LGBTQ+ sins being flaunted within them.
I don’t see God changing his just decrees and His unalterable Word.
This pope is a heretic, as are those sycophant clerics who follow him. The real problem within Holy Mother Church is an epidemic of cowardice amongst the Cardinals and Bishops.
Few say anything against this heretic for fear of losing their titles and positions of power and prestige.
The fence-sitters are plenty. And our Lord God has made abundantly clear how he feels about the wishy-washy uncommitted.
Time is running out for them. Even so, I truly expect the cowardly and the damned to do nothing as the antichrist continues his ascendancy. For Holy Mother Church, the worst is still to come.
Time to discard the notion that the LGBetc movement represents the voiceless.
It’s a well-oiled, powerful and very determined political lobby.
The Papacy of Francis has revealed many antagonisms in the Catholic Church which have been successfully crushed during Pope (now St.) John Paul 11. But as the Bibles clearly states it that we should pray much as even the notable chosen ones will crumble before the end of times. Now our venerated saints who shed even their blood for upholding the truth are in great agony of the current leadership of the church. Mat.7:1 warns us of judging others but again the same gospel teaches us to warn a neighbour who goes astray when one refuses then take the issue to other followers and when again one refuses to forego the warned acts, should be treated as a tax collector.
In the same category, those advocating for LGBT cause without calling upon them to return to the right cause should be excommunicated altogether to stay with a Biblical leaning church.
And a refrain of a narcissist obsessed with trying to prove superior love and magnanimity than Our Lord oblivious to consequences.
There is no such thing as an “LGBT Catholic”. One cannot embrace both sin and Catholic teaching.
LGBTQ Catholics? Is that not an oxymoron? Or, do we use that phrase to settle the powerful waters of turmoil and castigation?
The Bible addresses homosexuality in the Old and New Testaments. Genesis 19: The story of Sodom and Gomorrah.Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.” The holy books identify the sin and what not to do, but not how to address it and how to “eliminate” it.
I have Gay friends. How does a Catholic handle that relationship? We say that Gays are not born with this “dysphoria”, they choose that lifestyle.
I have asked, “why would a person CHOOSE a lifestyle that is one of misery and rejection of society?”
“We say that Gays are not born with this “dysphoria”, they choose that lifestyle. I have asked, “why would a person CHOOSE a lifestyle that is one of misery and rejection of society?”
Your posts are like a broken record at this point. You keep repeating this every time CWR pu wishes an article addressing homosexuality. Stop defending the indefensible here. Romans 1 outlines the moral descent that occurs when people choose to reject God. It’s a series of choices. Gay people chose their lifestyle because light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.
The Church will always be resistance to homosexuality as well as all the other sexual sins in society. It is long past time that the LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in the Church to be honest and tell these people that it is a sin and let the Church help you turn from sin.
We all know that this is just politics pushing acceptance of the LGBTQ+ sexual activity as normal but that will never happen because it is against God’s natural law.
And, under Veritatis Splendor, the natural law is now explicitly incorporated into the Magisterium of the Church.
“This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115)” And, “The Church is no way the author or the arbiter [!] of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Welcome to the clericalist deception of formally denying nothing while signaling and accommodating everything.