On LGBTQ rights, Pope Francis had a political epiphany

It's often forgotten that he had an antigay past. But as political as he was spiritual, he saw where things were going. That also helps explain lapses even in recent times.

On LGBTQ rights, Pope Francis, who died on Monday at 88, was a paradox.

It’s often forgotten that, before he became pope in 2013, as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, he’d often fought LGBTQ rights and made horrifically homophobic comments. Many LGBTQ people in a country that was out front on marriage equality condemned those comments, even as some Argentine gay activists said he quietly supported them.

When he became pope, Francis quickly began offering gay-friendly rhetoric, challenging conservatives in the church. This was decidedly not what those who elected him expected. The majority of cardinals—those cardinals under 80 who elect a new pope—had by then been appointed by Pope Benedict before he retired. They were men very much in Benedict’s own image, pushing a right-wing, antigay ideology.

So, was Francis, as a cardinal, a stealth progressive on the issue, who said and did what he had to do in order to get into the pinnacle of power in the church, even if that meant promoting ugly bigotry in the short term?

Or did he experience a transformation, evolving as he became pope, but also understanding the pro-LGBTQ politics of the West, which is where most of the money is, something the Vatican, as a financial institution besides being a political and spiritual one, couldn’t ignore?

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It’s probably a mix of both, which also helps to explain the backsliding Francis sometimes engaged in, often angering his most ardent supporters.

There’s no question that, with his death, the world lost a religious leader and head of state who used his enormous platform to speak up for environmental protections, the rights of immigrants, and aiding the poor. Having been arrested many years ago while protesting the previous pope—back when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s horribly antigay Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—I’ve always been a harsh critic of the church and its historic homophobia.

But Francis, by 2020, had become a force for change for queer people too, even if he was at times inconsistent. I’ve written here in recent years about the impact he had in taking on the conservative American Catholic church on issues affecting LGBTQ people, and, by default, taking on the GOP and the extremists in its base.

His urging parents of LGBTQ people to accept their children for “who they are,” his having met with transgender Catholics and his backing the “blessing” of gay unions—if not supporting marriage—were among many examples where he pushed the envelope. As a nation state with impact on the world, The Vatican has an outsized influence on governments on these and many other issues.

While the church’s doctrine on sexuality wasn’t changed—the church is on the 500-year plan, as I always say—Francis put in place the people who could change church doctrine moving forward, certainly if a pope with his views is elected by the cardinals.

Francis’ booting of Cardinal Raymond Burke—a homophobe and Covid denier in the American church who worked with anti-gay Republicans and supported Donald Trump—as well as the sidelining of quite a few other bigots in the church while replacing them with more enlightened cardinals who supported LGBTQ rights helped to cement his legacy. And he put in place the vast majority of cardinals who will now vote for his replacement.

This past January, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, installed by Francis, apologized for the church’s treatment of LGBTQ people over the centuries. That was pretty stunning.

And yet, Francis sometimes backtracked on his views when he got pushback from conservatives in the church that garnered media attention. The press would be sent many ambiguous statements from the Vatican about what Francis actually said about homosexuality or gay rights or transgender people after something was leaked that seemed to push boundaries. He was doing a political balancing act, even as many don’t want to believe the pope, besides being a spiritual leader, also tried to be a pragmatic politician.

Francis often seemed to move two steps forward, and then go one step back. Even though he supported blessing gay unions, for example—a big two-step—Francis in 2023 approved a Vatican document that stated people in same-sex relationships couldn’t be godparents. But the same document stated transgender people could be godparents and could be baptized. Yet, Francis, in 2024, lashed out at what he called “gender ideology” as the “ugliest danger of our time.”

Also last year, Francis was reported to have used an Italian anti-gay slur in describing gay men—frociaggine—at a closed door meeting in which he reportedly spoke against allowing openly gay men in the seminary. Then he issued an apology for using the slur—something you rarely get from leaders these days—but then it was reported he used it again two weeks later.

What to make of all this? On the issue of gay seminarians and his use of the gay slur at least, Father James Martin, the American Jesuit priest who’s been a supporter of LGBTQ rights, wrote in the New York Times that Francis told him privately that he knew “many good, holy and faithful gay priests and seminarians.” When Martin told him to say it publicly, he said, “You say it for me.”

This was, once again, the politician speaking. Regarding the slur, Martin challenged Francis on it, and wrote that “It became clear in our conversation that he hadn’t known how offensive the slur was, despite the Vatican apology, and he told me he would never use it again.”

The pope was 88 years old and grew up in a time of intense homophobia, even if, like other leaders, he believed he had to challenge himself and others as time went on. I went back and read my earliest pieces about Francis—going back to 2013, when I was editor-at-large at HuffPost—and I was surprised at how harsh those pieces were, simply because I’d not remembered how out-of-touch he was at times. It’s a testament to how much he’d evolved.

That early evolution as pope was in fits and starts. Here’s a passage from a piece I wrote on HuffPost in 2016—when Francis first suggested that the church should apologize to LGBTQ people for its treatment—looking back on Francis’s own actions in Argentina before he was pope:

As the Argentine government was moving to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, Bergoglio was quietly lobbying for civil unions instead, having spoken to at least one gay activist, realizing that the rights gays were deprived of were real and knowing that he and the church couldn't support marriage.

When that didn't work, and the government made it clear it was moving forward on marriage, Bergoglio did what the Vatican expected of him and which, like a politician, he knew he likely had to do if he were ever to have a shot at becoming pope in Benedict's Vatican: He issued an ugly, earth-scorching attack against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declared that gay marriage was a "destructive attack on God's plan."

My point was that, if Francis thought the church should apologize, he could begin with his own apology for his own brutal statements, something he never did. He in fact liked to obscure his past—famously saying “I was never a right-winger”—again, much like a politician would.

This gives us some insights into his lapses in recent times, including using the antigay slur. He came from a different time and likely believed at least some of what he was saying in years past, even if he may have evolved in his thinking. It’s not shocking in that context then that, in a closed-door meeting, he’d use an antigay slur that had been part of his lexicon in the past even though it was definitely not acceptable in 2024.

And yet, it’s undeniable that, whatever his motivations, Francis changed the discussion in the church on LGBTQ issues for the better, and put in place cardinals who have a history of promoting equality while he also stopped some of the most fervent homophobes in the church.

He sparred with Donald Trump and radical right-wing Catholic convert JD Vance over several issues. And Francis snubbed any substantive meeting with Vance, who was visiting Rome, the day before he died, offering a brief photo-op while having his second-in-command, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, meet with Vance. Then Francis gave his last Easter sermon that day, clearly criticizing Trump and Vance.

“How much contempt is stirred up at times toward the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants?” Francis said in the sermon.

It’s impossible to know if the next pope will follow in Francis’ footsteps. That Francis has appointed most of the cardinals who will decide his successor guarantees nothing. Don’t forget that a group elected him made up largely of right-wingers who likely thought they were electing someone who reflected their views.

But that’s where being a politician comes in handy—and I don’t put a negative connotation on that. Because a shrewd politician—which Benedict, a zealous ideologue, was not—will have planned meticulously for his replacement, knowing for the past several years he might die at any time. And he’d have done the work among those deciding on his successor to try to ensure that his progressive legacy lives on.