Gay pilgrims to have special day during Catholic Jubilee

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 6 - Gay Roman Catholic pilgrims will have a special day, September 6, during next year's Jubilee Holy Year celebrations, the Vatican confirmed Friday after a report in Rome daily Il Messaggero.
    On that day, it said, members of the Church's LGBT+ community will be welcomed into the Jesuit mother church, the Church of the Gesù, in central Rome.
    "The Jubilee of 2025 will open its doors to the first pilgrimage dedicated specifically to gays and LGBT+ people," said Il Messaggero.
    "An absolute novelty, unthinkable until a few years ago, the result of a pastoral attention that extends to milieux usually considered marginal".
    It said "the historic baroque Church of the Gesù has promoted welcoming LGBT+ pilgrims, their parents, workers and all those who gravitate towards these rainbow associations, led in Italy by Tenda di Gionata (Jonathan's Tent), the association founded on March 18, 2018, at the request of Don David Esposito, a priest who died prematurely, who dreamed that Christian communities would know how to 'widen the tent' (Isaiah 54) to make room for everyone to become more and more sanctuaries of welcome and support towards LGBT people and towards every person affected by discrimination".
    Asked abut the report, Jubilee 'director' mons. Rino Fisichella told ANSA: "Everyone is welcome".
    Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, and responsible for organizing the Jubilee, confirmed that "the initiative was born at the instigation of the Association 'La tenda di Gionata' and is on the calendar like many others." Soon after his election in 2013, Pope Francis said "who am I to judge" when asked about gays in the Church. In May 2022 he wrote a letter to gay Catholics saying "the Church does not refuse you".
    More recently he has criticised a "gay lobby" in the upper reaches of the institution.
    photo: pope's May 2022 letter to the Catholic LGBT+ community (ANSA).