New wine in new odors. When a priest meets the lives of LGBT+ people
Testimony of Don Matteo Cavani* held at the meeting Corner stones (Florence 5 April 2025)
I am a presbyter from Modena, I am 53 years old and I want to briefly tell you how I met the LGBT+ world and what happened when I met him.
From a diligent seminarian then became a presbyter, having an open and attentive style to new things, towards the "homosexuality theme" (which later became LGBT+) I have always had respect and attention, keeping, however, even that distance and that reserve of those who know things only theoretically and by hearsay.
I grew up in an open and welcoming ecclesial environment, but - I realize with hindsight - too 'protected'.
In addition, I also had the opportunity to deepen my studies of theology, by license and doctorate in moral theology in Rome, so I teach moral theology at the ISSR of Emilia (in Modena) and S. Pietro (in Verona), as well as being parish priest.
Things changed when I directly met the LGBT+world, or at least a part of it, through participation in the meetings that are held annually in Bologna and which collect pastoral operators. Intrigued by this meeting I made contact with p. Pino ... From Modena to Bologna the distance is short and so I met many stories.
Personally I had had the opportunity to accompany some homo -affective people and the synthesis had always been starting from life and in the construction of the possible good, but the meeting with the group of LGBT+ pastoral operators (which includes parents of children, homo -affective people, priests, religious and religious ...) made me really change my gaze.
I was above all struck by some things.
The first was the perception of really being all brothers and sisters, that is, to be simply yourself: Matteo, Marco, Lucia, Silvia ... without any need to exhibit roles, cards, emotional orientations ... it is not a banality, but an essential evangelical element. I have never lived in closed or bigoted environments, but the perception of a certain 'invisible structure' is often present in ecclesial contexts.
In the LGBT+ world I perceived a fraternal freedom and a vitality that was a little bit I did not perceive. And I liked it very much. Roles and authorities risk having a watertage effect against the Gospel, even if sometimes we do not notice it and it is as if he acted an invisible force, made of false respect and defense of the institution.
The second thing I understood is that many theoretical "reasoning" - I say theoretical and non -theological - leave the time they find and above all are unable to collect life, generativity, faith, the ability to give themselves to others ... which expresses people's lives.
I already knew it, because I have never been a bigoted closed inside a wardrobe, but touching the vital energy that releases from some people who shared their paths and testified their paths of humanity and faith, is completely completely different. And in this the LGBT+ world is really evangelical, because it takes away any mask and invites you to do the same.
The third aspect that I highlight is the need to listen to people's stories, but also to grasp the plots and meanings of people's lives, unite the dots to go beyond the individual aspect and look out the meaning that stories have. When Jesus meets people in the Gospel, he enters with them, but at the same time he is nourished and generated by people's stories. While it also becomes aware of who he is, and while, for example, the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4) tells her story Jesus, manifests to everyone, through her who is the Messiah. This woman makes it possible, through her life and her history ,, the event of the Messiah for everyone.
What I want to say. If we listen to the stories, but we keep them separate, we prevent them from encounter, we areolated them ... we do not have the experience of generativity, the revealing force and to go as well as the stories of people have.
Therefore, knowing a part of the LGBT+ movement has allowed me to discover a portion of the church that performs this precious service to tell us a little gospel, if we want to listen to it. I believe that in this sense the publications of the la Tenda di Gionata (and not only) are truly precious that tell the stories of people and are real songs of the Gospel in today.
Then a parable came to me that expresses very well what happened in me in the light of the meeting with the LGBT+world.
It is the parable of the new wine in new ones.
36«Nobody snatches a piece from a new dress to put it on an old dress; Otherwise the new tears him and the old man does not fit the piece taken from the new.37And nobody pour new wine into old men; Otherwise the new wine will split the OTRI, will spread and the Otri will be lost.38The new wine must be poured it into new odors.39No one who drinks old wine wants the new, because he says: "The old man is pleasant!" ". (Lk 5,36-39)
The first attempt I made - in good faith - was to take a piece of new dress and put it on the old one. I tried to put the theme of homosexuality, a new piece of dress, on an old dress, a certain anthropological and theological approach, the notorious "Christian anthropology". A large box with which you risk shielding everything that is new and trying to reduce what is not reducible: the life of people.
Hence the experience of tasting the new wine, the life of brothers and sisters LGBT+, which had a new and good flavor, which led me to the awareness that this wine cannot be put in the old wines, because the new wine, as Jesus says, breaks the athletes and everything is lost: wine and odors.
So I came to the awareness that new odors are needed, that is, a new setting of anthropology and theology, and now I find myself working in this perspective. It is a question of recognizing that there is a new light that illuminates the path, there is a look that LGBT+ people carry on life and on the Gospel. This gaze helps above all on the theme of affections to show that there are truly different forms with which to live the love between people, forms that are not in contrast, but are simply an expression of the wealth with which God manifests himself.
Now thanks to the encounter with many people, such a bright and warm light shines - certainly not without imperfections and fragility as it is for each of us - but certainly full of that humanity that Jesus has assumed and always met willingly, unlike those who were scandalized because he was hypocritical.
What I feel I have a new look, which I share with the other eleven priests with whom I make common life. We are diocesan priests who experience live together, in fact we are a "homo -affective community", because what has led us to make this choice is the friendship that binds us and that has brought as a surprising fruit to live concretely in this form our ministry, in a path of ecclesial discernment started in 1995, 30 years ago ... but this is another story ...
As a presbyteral community, we have known in particular some parents of LGBT+, Mara and Agostino, Beatrice and Gampiero, Michela and Corrado boys ... who the first time came to our house for a dialogue and a comparison and with whom a friendship was born.
In addition, in the parish community there are LGBT+ people and above all - for my part - we try not to make a specific pastoral care, but to ensure that those who want to make a journey of Christian life within the community can live it without any driving license or credential and above all without any discrimination.
I like to say in the parish that the doors of the Church are open and those who want to enter to participate and share can do so without showing any card or credential. On Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist whoever crosses the threshold of the Church is welcome and can participate with his life, his joys and pains, his hopes and his anxieties.
To conclude. The meeting with the LGBT+ world has given me a new look that I am grateful, because I feel it closer to the Gospel and has truly 'reversed' the way I try to live the faith and I do theology, no longer starting from theory, but from life, aware that reality is superior to the idea (cf. Evangelii Gaudium 231).
*Don Matteo Cavani is parish priest and teacher of moral theology.
