Posted on 09/06/2025 3:21:25 PM PDT by ebb tide
Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, celebrated Mass at the Church of the Gesù on Saturday for LGBT pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee of Hope.
An Italian lay association organized the international pilgrimage, which included a morning Mass celebration inside the mother church of the Society of Jesus in Rome and a St. Peter’s Basilica Holy Door pilgrimage in the afternoon.
More than 1,000 pilgrims from around the world attended the Mass concelebrated by approximately 30 priests, including American Father James Martin, SJ, who had met with Pope Leo XIV in a Sept. 1 private audience at the Vatican.
Several people, including religious brothers and sisters, waved rainbow-colored fans to keep cool inside the packed church and some wore shirts with a phrase from 1 John 4:18, “nell’amore non c’e timore” (“there is no fear in love”), during the Mass.
In his homily, Savino underscored the inherent dignity of every person and the need to “restore dignity to those who had been denied it.”
“We are all a pilgrim people of hope and we want to leave this celebration more joyful and hopeful than ever,” Savino said during his homily. “We have to go forward, convinced that God loves us [with] a unique and unrepeatable love … unconditional love.”
“In that awareness there is the foundation of all hope,” he said.
Reflecting on the selected Mass readings and Gospel for the day, Savino said St. Paul’s writings in the New Testament teach us that “a small step” in the midst of great human limitations may be “more pleasing to God than the outwardly correct life” of those who do not experience trials in life.
“We all have to convert, that is, we turn, we look in the opposite direction than before. The Acts of the Apostles documents this experience as defining and definitive,” he said.
“Truly I am realizing that each of us, you here present, your family members, your brothers and sisters, we pastors and disciples of the Lord — each of us has had in our lives to accept or to reject a living truth,” he added.
Asking the Lord to “deliver us freely from any polemical or ideological temptation, from any preconceived temptation based on prejudice,” the Italian bishop spoke of the need for “Peter and the Apostolic College to put living truth before dead truth,” a reference to the pope and bishops today.
The Sept. 6 Mass concluded with rounds of loud applause and great emotion. Family members and friends sang the recessional hymn and hugged each other as the bishop and concelebrating priests processed out of the main part of the basilica, led by a pilgrim holding a rainbow-colored cross.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, people with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies … must be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
The catechism also states that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Meanwhile, the Vatican prohibits the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.
21. 2 Peter 2:2-3
“Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories.”
19. Matthew 15:9
“They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.”
20. Acts 20:30
“Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.”
11. 2 Timothy 4:3-4
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
4. 2 Corinthians 11:13-14
“For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
7. 1 Timothy 4:1
“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”
1. Matthew 7:15
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”
2. 2 Peter 2:1
“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them.”
3. 1 John 4:1
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Jeremiah 14:14
14 Then the LORD said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.
Jeremiah 23:16
16 This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.
Luke 6:26
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
5. Jude 1:4
“For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality.”
6. Galatians 1:8
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!”
8. Matthew 24:24
“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
9. Romans 16:17
“I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned.”
16. 2 Corinthians 11:3
“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”
25. 2 John 1:10-11
“If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.”
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