Local groups that have traditionally been estranged from the Catholic Church are offering mixed views on the election of Pope Leo XIV.
Organizations that work with the LGBTQ+ community say they’re encouraged by Leo’s close alignment with the late Pope Francis, and hope he’ll share his predecessor’s inclusiveness and conciliatory approach on social issues.
“I believe that this signals some hope for Pope Leo to slowly act as a bridge builder, address more contemporary needs, and include LGBTQ inclusion with fresh dialogue,” said Dallas Ducar, an executive at Fenway Health who was raised Catholic.
Francis surprised many early in his papacy when he was asked whether gay priests should have a role in the church. He famously responded by saying, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
Ducar noted that Leo has previously expressed conservative views on LGBTQ+ issues, such as opposing gender-inclusive education and same-sex and same-gender families — but she is cautiously optimistic that there may be a future of openness.
“Pope Leo has avoided inflammatory and dehumanizing rhetoric. I believe that measured tone will open doors for dialogue and de-escalation compared to policies that have erased trans protections or denied LGBTQ health care rights,” Ducar said.
Madeline Marlett, secretary at Dignity Boston, a progressive Catholic organization that advocates for inclusion of LGBTQ+ people within the church, is a bit more guarded.
“I think things that are encouraging is Pope Leo is committed to the synod process, which we’ve all kind of welcomed as a way to be heard a little bit more within the institution of the church,” Marlett said.
Currently, Dignity Boston celebrates mass and liturgies at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the South End after having been “kicked out” of Catholic spaces in 1986.
As a queer transgender woman, Marlett is encouraged by the church hierarchy’s more welcoming view of women, but has concerns with an American Pope.
“I think the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has not been super friendly to LGBT folks and have been pretty condemnatory and seems to me to be on some of the forefront of more conservative values within the church as opposed to, say, some of these groups of bishops in Europe,” Marlett added.
For survivors of clergy sexual abuse, Leo’s election has raised “grave concerns.”
Myra Russell leads a Boston women’s group for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, and is a clergy abuse survivor herself.
She said SNAP filed a complaint on March 25 on behalf of three victims against Leo, then Cardinal Robert Prevost, over his handing of sexual abuse complaints as head of the Order of St. Augustine and as a bishop in Peru. Specifically, SNAP accused Prevost of blocking investigations in at least three cases.
To Russell, the election of Leo was a failure for the church.
“This was a moral test ... for the Vatican, and it’s a real slap in the face for survivors especially,” she said. “It’s hard to have hope from a place that continues to justify abuse.”
Russell said the memories of her abuse surfaced as an adult in 2019 while working as a social worker at a Boston area hospital. She said she vowed to take her personal clergy abuse to the grave, but she could no longer hold it in.
She has testified to help pass legislation in Massachusetts that would extend the statute of limitations on reporting clergy abuse.
“I always say that history usually predicts a lot of what is going to happen in the future. And that’s the unfortunate part,” she said. “You can only hope that things will get better. But it just seems when it comes to the church, progress is very, very slow.”
