NUNTIATORIA

Vatican to Host Pro-LGBTQ+ Group We Are Church (October 2025)

In a move unprecedented in modern Church history, Pope Leo XIV has formally invited the international reformist group We Are Church to take part in the 2025 Holy Year celebrations in Rome. The group—long known for promoting greater LGBTQ+ inclusion, advocating for the ordination of women, and pressing for structural reform—will be officially received at the Vatican from 24 to 26 October 2025 during the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies¹.

Founded in Austria in 1995 following the “Church Referendum” (Kirchenvolks-Begehren), We Are Church quickly expanded across Europe and beyond. Its five-point founding petition demanded the ordination of women, an end to mandatory celibacy, greater lay participation in governance, a “positive” reassessment of human sexuality, and increased transparency in clerical abuse cases². Today, the group is active in over twenty countries, with an explicitly reformist agenda often at odds with Catholic doctrine³.

The October invitation will allow eight We Are Church delegates to participate in Jubilee Year rites, including the symbolic passage through the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica—a liturgical act signifying spiritual renewal and reconciliation⁴. Speaking to the press, co-founder Christian Weisner described the reception as “a sign for the Church as a whole: to leave mistakes behind and to set out again in Christian hope”⁵.

The Vatican has presented the invitation as part of the broader Jubilee of Synodal Teams, intended to celebrate “participatory bodies” within the Church. However, the theological and ecclesial implications of formally welcoming a group whose public positions contradict magisterial teaching are considerable. The Church has repeatedly reaffirmed, most recently under Pope John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women” and that “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”⁶. Likewise, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2003 document Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons clearly states that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”⁷.

Since his election in May 2025, Pope Leo XIV has sought to position himself as both a defender of doctrinal teaching and a promoter of synodal engagement. In June 2025, he reiterated that marriage is “the stable union between a man and a woman”⁸, but has also maintained the Fiducia Supplicans allowance for blessings of same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis⁹. This approach appears consistent with the Francis-era strategy of pastoral accommodation while avoiding formal doctrinal change.

Critics within the Church have expressed concern that the gesture towards We Are Church will be perceived as tacit endorsement of their doctrinally incompatible agenda. Traditionalist theologians warn that such encounters, if not clearly bounded, risk reinforcing the post-Vatican II tendency to conflate dialogue with doctrinal concession. They note that the Second Vatican Council itself affirmed in Lumen Gentium that “the order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, together with their head, the Supreme Pontiff, and never without this head, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church”¹⁰—a reminder that collegiality and participation do not supersede the divinely instituted teaching authority of the Magisterium.

The Vatican has not confirmed whether Pope Leo XIV will personally meet with the We Are Church delegation. For now, the invitation stands as a highly symbolic act: the first formal reception of the group in the Apostolic Palace. Whether it represents a cautious opening for dialogue or a diplomatic nod to the peripheries of Catholic reform movements remains to be seen—but its theological ramifications will be closely watched by both supporters and critics of the post-conciliar trajectory.

1. “Pope Leo Will Receive a Pro-LGBTQ+ Catholic Group at the Vatican for the First Time,” Them, 13 Aug 2025.
2. “We Are Church International,” Official Website, accessed 14 Aug 2025.
3. “We Are Church International,” Wikipedia, last updated 14 Aug 2025.
4. “Holy Door – Jubilee 2025,” The Vatican Tickets, accessed 14 Aug 2025.
5. Them, ibid.
6. John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 22 May 1994.
7. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, 3 June 2003.
8. “Pope Leo XIV Says Marriage Is ‘Between a Man and a Woman,’” Them, 2025.
9. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia Supplicans, 18 Dec 2023.
10. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, n. 22.