Some saw Pope Francis as an ally. While the Cardinals meet to choose the next Pope, 2LGBTQ+ Church division issues

Michael Cinenet remembers the moment he sat from a priest in a church in his hometown in Boston and began to submit his confession.

Sennett was seventeen years old and recently tried to kill himself.

After he was discharged from the hospital, the Catholics sought for life to a priest because he was struggling by leaving the transgender and how it fits with his deep faith.

“I said I thought that Trisk was wrong,” he said to CBC News in an interview with Zoom.

His response to this was: “It is not (wrong). You have to love yourself the way God loves you. “

This conversation was not only raised in 2012 Sennett, but also put it on the way for the minister in the end of the 2SLGBTQ community. Last October, he and a few others met with Pope Francis, and they spoke for more than an hour.

Sinit said Francis listened while participating their experiences, and rubbed the cross that stuck from his neck while they were darker moments on their trips.

He said the matter was as if Francis was sharing their pain. This type of sympathy is something that Sennett hopes to embrace the next Pope as well.

Pontifical vote

While the Cardinals go to the Sistine Church for the sake of flavor on Wednesday to elect the successor of Francis, they definitely think about the comprehensiveness of the hierarchical Catholic Church – and how it should move in the issue of an increasing division, not only between the Catholics but in the broader society in an increasing time of political tension.

Throughout the 12 -year period, Francis defended the idea that the church is a place that everyone should welcome. He was repeatedly met people from the 2SLGTBQ community, and while his wooden coffin was transferred to Santa Maria Maglor Bazilica for his burial, sexually transgender activists were present on the steps leading to the church.

He was seen as an ally – but with limits.

Francis did not change the Christian education of the Catholic Church, which is still considered “Homosexual Practices” Sin and “Disked in its essenceBut the changes and data he made, such as approval of The blessing of unions of the same sexIt was sufficient to stir criticism from the most conservative religious leaders.

In 2023, the Cardinal Ludwig Müller called the Vatican Guidance around the blessings of the same sex couples “Rowing”.

Last week, in an interview with Italian newspaper La StambaMuller, who was a student in Francis’s predecessor, Pordekleh, said that the next Pope should have been “strong in belief” and “determined to face ideology and power salaries, including homosexuals.”

Increasingly

At a time when The invitation groups mentioned The increase in speech via phobia and some police organizations have reported a rise in hate crimes Touring sexual inclination SexTt is believed that the issue has the ability to pay an additional wedge between progressive and conservative Catholics.

“I don’t see why Pope Francis has very lightly, but still is very boldly,” said Senet, who is now working in Newton, Massachusetts, with a group of Catholic awareness methods.

“I think gay issues, especially consciousness and sexual admission in the Catholic Church, are very exciting.”

Francis’s actions contradict the actions of Benedict XVI, which signed a document in 2005. “Serving gay, deep -rooted sex” It should not be priests.

Less than six months after the manufacture of Francis Bob, he occupied newspaper headlines all over the world when he announced “who I am to rule”, when a journalist asked him about the sexual tilt of the priests.

This brief statement led to Francis’s announcement of the year before LawyerIt is a US -based post focusing on a 2SLGBTQ community.

When Italian journalist Marco Greko, 37, heard that Francis issued this statement, he felt acceptable.

“(Francis) broke the taboo the word gay.” “People came out of the cabinet … and they don’t want to return to the next Pope.”

Grieco, who covers the issues of 2LGBTQ+ and the Vatican, met Francis in 2022 and says his legacy is complicated. Grek himself sees it with a mixture of promise and disappointment.

“His approach was a little mysterious,” Greco said in an interview with CBC News in Saint Peter Square on April 22.

“The door opened the gay community inside the church … but not wide.”

Tension in the Catholic Church

In 2023, he called Francis “Sexual ideology” A threat because he sought to erase gender differences.

While the priests were allowed to bless the unions of the same sex, he insisted that it could not be compared to marriage between a man and a woman. In one of his books, entitled Life: My story throughout history, He wrote that “it is unacceptable that the churches are pressure to pressure this.”

While Francis has appointed the vast majority of Cardinals who will vote on the side, says Peter Baltotis, a associate professor of history and religious studies at St. Mary University in Calgary, that there are competing toys.

He told CBC News in an interview with Zoom: “It was often said that the Catholic Church is a large tent, and the tent is collected together with its tension.”

He said that he sees polarization in his seasons, as some students want to see the church taking a more comprehensive position while others believe that the outside world imposes a “wake up” agenda on the Catholic Church.

Baltutis, who also carries the Catholic Women Association for Catholic Studies at the university, describes the church as closer to slow -moving oil tankers that can only change the path gradually.

He believes that Francis’s statements and procedures on 2SLGBTQ cases were raised as experimental balloons designed to start a conversation. Francis encouraged the dioceses and individual churches to think and act at the popular level.

Baltutis said it was an approach that tried to manage different opinions. These opinions can come out behind the closed doors in the Sistin Church, given that this range is the most geographical diversified ever.

“The question about gay rights is in fact a material issue in the Western world, North America and Europe,” Beltotis said.

“But in the places where the church grows, in the global south, Africa, Latin America, Asia … there is a cultural understanding completely different these issues.”

Baltutis does not expect the Church to change any doctrine soon, but it said that these types of issues will be the elephant in the room for those who choose the Cardinals.

“In order for the church to be relevant in 2025, you must consider dealing with this,” he said.

“If the Pope controls … silence this issue, then this will also talk about volumes.”