Per i cristiani LGBTQ+ è possibile essere persone intere?

Foreword by Laura Ricci* taken from the book edited by Elisa Belotti**, I trust you. Listening to LGBT+ Christian people and their parents, published by La tent di Gionata, march 2026, pp.1-2

There is a question that returns, formulated in many different ways, in the stories of almost all the people I have met in years of pastoral service alongside LGBT+ believers and their families. A simple and radical question at the same time: is it possible to be whole people? Whole in identity, in relationships, in faith, in belonging. Without having to choose which part of yourself to sacrifice on the altar of other people's acceptance.

This question is the beating heart of “I trust you” service, born in 2020. In recent years, dozens and dozens of people have written to that small email address looking for someone willing to listen without judging: boys and girls who were struggling to keep faith and sexual orientation together, parents disoriented after a child's coming out, transgender people looking for recognition, couples who wondered if there was a place for them in the Church.

Trusting requires courage in both directions: on the one hand for those who reveal themselves, exposing the most vulnerable part of themselves, and on the other hand for those who receive that trust, giving up their certainties to make room for a more alive and complex reality than they imagined.

As a psychologist, I have had the privilege of walking alongside many of these people: in the studio, on pastoral paths and in ecclesial contexts of different sensitivity. I have learned to stay in the silence of an embrace when words are not enough.

I learned that the conflict between identity and faith does not arise from weakness, but from fidelity: fidelity to oneself and fidelity to God, experienced as irreconcilable by those who have not yet found a space in which to keep them together. And I learned that faith, far from being an obstacle, can be the deepest root from which the ability to love without conditions grows, even towards one's children.

Because parents, often mothers, come to listen with a pain that is not rejection, but disorientation. And the journey from disorientation to acceptance is not only possible, but it is one of the most transformative that I have ever accompanied.

This booklet (I trust you. Listening to LGBT+ Christian people and their parents), offers no definitive answers. It offers voices, stories, honest questions. It offers the possibility of feeling less alone. Because loneliness – I've heard it countless times – is often the hardest burden to bear.

If you hold these pages in your hands, you are probably going through something important. May you find yourself, at least in part, faithful company.

* Laura Ricci is a psychologist, trainer and president of the association Doceat, as well as professor of Dynamic Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology at the Theological Faculty of Emilia Romagna. His professional activity moves along two profound and complementary directions: trauma and talent. It accompanies people, groups and organizations in navigating separations, bereavements and changes - personal and professional - with an approach that transforms wounds into new opportunities for life and growth.

** Elisa Belotti, journalist and teacher, deals with human rights and marginalized communities, with particular attention to the impact of religion on society. For The Revue, wrote comic investigations on religion class at school, violence against religious women and women conversion therapies. She is the author of Without mills, a newsletter on Christianity around the world.