ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 10, 2023 / 14:30 pm
The archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, responded to two questions about how the Church welcomes Catholics from the “LGBTQ+” community (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, queer, and more) and about how it treats the faithful who love the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).
At the Tuesday, Oct. 10, press conference on the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican, the cardinal responded to a question about those who feel “excluded” from the Church, which the working document mentions, such as divorced persons who remarry without an annulment and people who identify as LGBTQ+.
The Synod on Synodality was convened in October 2021 under the theme “For a synodal Church: communion, participation, and mission.” Participating in the session taking place in Rome this October are 364 people including bishops, religious, priests, deacons, and laypeople. For the first time, non-bishops — including 54 women — will have the right to vote.
Responding to a question posed by an Italian journalist, the cardinal recalled that a few years ago he received “a pilgrimage of people who felt marginalized due to their sexual orientation — LGBTQ+ people — in the cathedral. I couldn’t stay for the whole service because I had other commitments as well, but I welcomed them.”