Pope in his book: RCC welcomes everyone, including gays and trans people

Cover of Pope Francis's Autobiography. Photo: Amazon

On January 14, 2025, Pope Francis's autobiographical book, Hope: The Autobiography, was released, featuring several pages addressing the Pope's meetings with LGBT individuals and his reflections on the Catholic Church's attitude toward such people. This was reported by the Catholic LGBT resource Outreach.

Specifically, Pope Francis writes about one of his encounters with transgender individuals, recalling how they left in tears after he held their hands and embraced them.

“As if I had done something exceptional for them,” the Pontiff writes. “But they are daughters of God!”

Francis added that transgender individuals should have access to the sacraments just like any other believer and reiterated his stance that they are allowed to be baptized, serve as godparents, or act as witnesses at weddings.

“They can receive baptism on the same conditions as other believers and can perform the responsibilities of godparents on the same conditions as others, and likewise be witnesses to a marriage,” he writes. “No provision of canonical law forbids it.”

Speaking about gay people more broadly, the Pope writes:

“God the Father loves them with the same unconditional love, He loves them as they are, and He accompanies them in the same way that He does with all of us: being close by, merciful, and tender.”

Reflecting on Amoris Laetitia, the 2016 apostolic exhortation on family life, which opened the door to communion for Catholics in non-traditional situations – including divorced and remarried individuals, as well as those in same-sex relationships – Pope Francis stated that “sexual sins tend to cause more of an outcry from some people.”

“But they are really not the most serious. They are human sins, of the flesh,” Francis wrote, emphasizing that pride, hatred, lies, fraud, and abuse of power are graver sins.

He lamented the double standards often applied when it comes to the Church's blessings.

"It is strange that nobody worries about the blessing of an entrepreneur who exploits people, and this is a grave sin, or about someone who pollutes our common home,” he writes, “while there’s a public scandal if the pope blesses a divorced woman or a homosexual.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the Vatican had permitted homosexuals to become priests.

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