Thinking about swimming the Tiber? Think twice...

 By Jules Gomes Published on August 19, 2025 at The Stream

Marking a historic first, the Vatican is officially recognizing group pilgrimages of LGBT+ Catholics as participants in Rome’s Jubilee Year events while Pope Leo XIV prepares to host a radical group dedicated to overturning biblical teaching on sexual morality.

Pro-LGBT+ Catholics are applauding the Vatican’s openness in arranging for Leo to meet with one of the Catholic Church’s most extreme lobby groups, We Are Church, which has been invited to the Vatican by Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod on Synodality.

The Italian bishops’ media outlet, L’Avvenire, confirmed on August 14 that Grech, one of the highest-ranking cardinals in the Vatican, has invited eight members from We Are Church to join the Jubilee Year events scheduled for October 26-28.

The movement is “known for its radical demands for ecclesial reform,” the bishops’ newspaper acknowledged, including the ordination of women, the freedom to use artificial contraception, the full inclusion of homosexuals in the Church, and optional priestly celibacy.

LGBT+ Leaders Rejoice Over Vatican Welcome

“We are delighted with this opportunity. There is much anticipation for this meeting, and even a certain amount of joy,” said Elza Ferrario, spokesperson for the Italian branch of the campaign group. “We are a reformist movement that hasn’t always had good relations with the institutional Church, so we are pleased to hear words of esteem.”

The pilgrimage is called: “Church: Home for All, LGBT+ Christians and Other Existential Frontiers.”

“Our patient work over 30 years, during which we have often been present in Rome at bishops’ synods, council commemorations, papal elections, and other events, may have contributed to this,” We Are Church cofounder Christian Weisner told Vatican News. “I also see the passage through the Holy Door as a sign for the Church as a whole: to leave mistakes behind and to set out again and again in Christian hope.”

The Jubilee 2025 website explains that the Holy Door in designated basilicas “is the most powerful sign of the Jubilee” and “passing through the Holy Door expresses the decision to follow and be guided by Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd.”

In Catholic understanding, pilgrims who pass through the Holy Door do so with repentant hearts and a genuine desire to change their lives. Conservative Catholics have objected to the weaponization of the Holy Door symbolism by LGBT+ groups that intend to subvert its meaning by calling upon the Church instead to repent for its biblical position on homosexuality.

Conservative Catholics Blast Holy Year Weaponization

“The practice of homosexuality is a very serious moral transgression condemned by Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church,” writes Italian historian Roberto Mattei.

If a homosexual repents of his sin and confesses, he can certainly pass through the Holy Door, entrusting himself to the mercy of God for the remission of the punishments due to his sins, but he does not need to do so with fanfare, and much less in an organized group.

Official participation in the Jubilee by an association of homosexuals, which does not have the goal of their conversion but rather justifies their conduct, has a clear instrumental intent: that of making it appear that the Church has changed its judgment on homosexuality.

The historian is calling upon Vatican authorities to “prevent these instrumentalizations” and reiterate “the incompatibility that exists between the Holy Year and moral transgression asserted as a right” lest “become complicit in the moral violation that they fail to condemn.”

Meanwhile, several Catholic LGBT+ groups have announced that they will be participating with the Vatican’s approval in the Jubilee Year services. The Vatican is officially listing their participation listed in the Jubilee Year Calendar, scandalizing Catholics who remain faithful to the Church’s traditional teaching on homosexuality.

That teaching, however, suffered a serious setback after Pope Francis permitted priests to offer nonliturgical blessings to same-sex couples in his 2023 declaration Fiducia Supplicans.

Bishop Will Celebrate Mass for Global LGBT+ Pilgrims

On August 12, LGBT+ Catholics Westminster’s Younger Adults Group members and others from LGBT+ Catholics Westminster announced that they will join pilgrims from the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, the European Forum of LGBTI+ Christian Groups, Roman Catholic member groups, and a large number of Italian LGBT+ Catholic groups in Rome.

“For the first time in church history, LGBTQ+ Catholic groups are getting ready to participate in the Jubilee, not in spite of their queerness, but through it,” noted New Ways Ministry, a pro-LGBT+ Catholic campaign group.

On September 5, LGBT+ pilgrims will join in a Prayer Vigil, which will be “a time for everyone to be recognized in their uniqueness.” The next day, LGBT+ pilgrims will be guided through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica with Bishop Francesco Savino of Cassano all’Jonio celebrating Mass for LGBT+ groups at the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order.

In an interview on the Feast of the Assumption, Savino said that LGBT+ groups participating in the Jubilee “is like a bell ringing loudly in the deafening silence of exclusion: a clear, strong and irreversible signal that reminds us that the Gospel is not a manifesto for a few elected, but a love letter addressed to the entire human family.

“It is not a question of ‘hosting’ someone in the house of the Lord, but of recognizing that everyone is already a full inhabitant,” the prelate said. “In the beating heart of the Eucharist — which is the very heart of the Gospel — nobody is a foreigner, nobody is excluded, nobody is invisible.”

Faithful Roman Catholics need to speak up now or forever hold their peace. 

Division

This Sunday's reading is from Luke 12:49-56,

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son

   and son against father,

mother against daughter

   and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

My Dad used to say, "Never discuss religion or politics at the dinner table" to reduce the chance of conflict. 

The worst subject to bring up is church politics.

Jesus still divides. 

I have had friends who developed such anti-Christian opinions that they no longer speak to me. 

I guess I was warned.

Meanwhile in Sweden: A Storm over the Rainbow Vestment

 Tamás Orbán reports at The European Conservative,

Swedish Priest Under Media Fire for Refusing To Wear Rainbow Vestment

Multiple leftist media outlets attacked Swedish pastor Håkan Persson, the parish priest of Markaryd, after a recent social media post in which he criticized the new rainbow-colored, LGBT-friendly vestments designed to be the symbol of the progressivism of the Church of Sweden.

In his Facebook post, Persson stated that the rainbow-colored chasuble and stole, designed at the initiative of the Västerås diocese, “will not enter Markaryd’s church as long as I am vicar.” 

While the media paints him as acting from “a hidden minority-intolerant agenda” and accuses him of discriminating against the LGBT community in his parish, the priest insists he merely follows the liturgical rules of the church, and his doors remain open to anyone, but not to momentary political trends and sexual advertising.

“In the Church of Sweden, we have liturgical vestments that follow the church year. We actually have rules for that,” Persson explained. Anything other than white, red, green, and purple, depending on the liturgical season, is inconsistent with the Church’s official guidelines, he said.

Good for him for standing firm in an otherwise wayward Church. 

Be Dressed For Action!

 This Sunday's reading is from Luke 12:32-40,

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

How do you stay dressed for action? 

Freefalling: The Organization in Wales

I have been following the situation in Wales for a number of years thanks to the Ancient Briton blog, and the following came as no surprise,

From Christian Concern, 

The Church in Wales has appointed an Archbishop who is openly living in defiance of Christian teaching.

Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, comments: “Cherry Vann lives with her civil partner, Wendy, in a same-sex relationship. This directly contradicts the Church’s historic and biblical doctrine that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and that sexual relationships are reserved for marriage.

“As an ordained minister, and now Archbishop, Cherry Vann has sworn to uphold the teaching of the Church. Instead, she is publicly living in deliberate rejection of those very doctrines.

“That she was elected with a two-thirds majority of the Electoral College demonstrates that the Church in Wales has now institutionally turned away from biblical teaching on sexual morality.

“What is a church if it refuses to uphold the doctrines it professes to believe? What does the Church in Wales actually stand for, if not the gospel handed down through the centuries?

“This appointment marks a tragic moment, evidence that the Church in Wales is in open rebellion against God’s Word. It is a clear sign of apostasy.

“No Bible-believing Christian can remain under the spiritual leadership of someone who so publicly rejects the clear teaching of Scripture.

“God will judge His Church for abandoning the gospel. As James reminds us, those who teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1).

“And yet, there is hope. My prayer is that this judgment would bring repentance, that the Church in Wales would turn back to God, recover the truth of the gospel it once proclaimed, and again become a faithful witness in this land.”

By eye witness reports, weekly attendance in the Organization in Wales is in freefall but the Organization no longer releases attendance figures. 

The new Archbishop's election will accelerate the decline. 

God may be working His purpose out by speeding the demise of the Organization in Wales.

But God said to him, ‘Fool!

 This Sunday's reading is from Luke 12:13-21, The Parable of the Rich Fool

One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?”  And he said to them, “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully;  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Jesus explains the meaning of the parable, no need for me to add to it.