A particular day. The novelty of the meeting of Pope Francis with parents with LGBT children

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Testimony of DEA Santonic and Stefano Toppi, a couple of parents who participated with with Jonathan's tent all 'Audience of Pope Francis September 16, 2020 ‌

On September 16th we were also in the Vatican at the VaticanAudience of the Pope. We had been invited together with other parents of children and daughters LGBT, with us also a group of homosexual children of the association Jonathan's tent.

The meeting had a great resonance in the press, many spoke about it in enthusiastic terms, other reductive, underlining that what the Pope had said nothing changed to the official doctrine of the Church.

It was Mara, mother of a gay son who represented us. At the end of the hearing he met the Pope and handed him a booklet that collects the testimonies of some parents, he is titled: "Lucky parents - to live the homosexuality of children from believers"We are lucky - explained Mara - because our children made us change our gaze, and we would like the Church to change her gaze on them, with our contribution, because we are there. Pope Francis replied that God loves our children, loves every man and every woman, and that even the Church loves them. These are his words on which it was discussed in the days that followed the audience. simplification) - that nothing has changed?

True, the Pope's speech could continue like this: God loves homosexual people, but condemns their "acts". The one that is written on the catechism remains valid: "The acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered". Without contradicting himself the Pope could thus complete his answer to Mara. But he did not do it. Because he knows that that condemnation does not come from God - not by the God who told us Jesus in the Gospels - but all and only from the Church? Why did he know that those words would have made Mara suffer? He will pronounce them in other contexts to reassure those who think anything else about homosexuality? Safe written in the documents that matter.

If the Pope's words, isolated from the context, do not mark any turning point - and we are convinced - we are equally convinced that those who take those words as the only reading key of that meeting, risks not capturing their scope.

The novelty is elsewhere. To begin with, it is in the invitation of LGBT people and parents to a hearing - the first time for that we know. Didn't the Vatican not expect so much? Has the thing out of hand has escaped? Or the enthusiastic statements that followed the meeting, and who described it as a turning point by Pope Francis, were foreseen and it was fine for the pope?

The novelty is in those mothers who shouted the Pope's passage: Remember our homosexual children. In those dads who said: We are lucky parents, we are all children of God. After years of loss, pain and shame, they were there to shout in a square crowded with people, without hiding more, proud/and their sons and daughters.

The novelty is in the smiling face of Mara, for too many years consumed by tears, who, dressed in the colors of the rainbow, protagonist in spite of himself, was with his head held high in front of the Pope, to explain to him with his gaze how the church must look at our children, and to testify with his smile that their homosexuality, that the Church has made us live as a sin, is instead a gift that makes us lucky parents. In front of her an elderly pope, a little badly man on his legs, who, more than as a follower of Peter and the many

Pietro - too often, instead of foundation stones, stampered stones on the street indicated by Jesus - we like to think as a follower of that Francis, of which he took the name, who, in the dream of Pope Innocent III - is told, but perhaps it is a legend - he supports the church on his shoulders, who is collapsing under the weight of sin and power.

That image speaks of more than any word. Because the images come direct, without filters, without too many interpretations. It runs a shiver in the back when we think back to another image, that of Wojtyla, on the occasion of his visit to Chile in 1987, overlooking the balcony with Pinochet. The words spoken by the Pope nobody remembers them. It was that image that spent and saying that the church was on the side of the dictators, and bloodthirsty dictators such as Pinochet.

Also this time the strength of the images had the best of words and tells a different church: A hug by Pope Francis to the LGBT community - So Agnese Pini, director of La Nazione, spoke about it, on the front page on Radio 3. This is how many and many came to the heart: a hug from which they felt warmed up.

At the end of the interview with Mara some gay boys, who were close to us, shouted thanks to the Pope. He moved us that thank you shouted by those who were offended, despised, removed from the church.

They are the discarded stone that has become a corner head. It is a preventive thanks, it is along the journey to deserve it: the Church must convert and ask for forgiveness. The path is long. The time to do it short, perhaps that thank you gives us the hope that has not yet expired.