By Br. Jay Woods, OFM  

I was honored to represent the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe in August at the 2024 Outreach Conference. According to their website (Home - Outreach): “Outreach is an LGBTQ resource, offering news, essays, resources and community for LGBTQ Catholics and those who minister with them in the Catholic Church worldwide.

Two bespeckled people and one without glasses pose for a photo. One is bearded and wearing a friar habit. All three are wearing yellow lanyards.

Photo courtesy of Br. Jay Woods, OFM.

Building community

The theme for the third annual Outreach conference was “Building Community.” Founder Fr. James Martin, SJ, Executive Director Michael J. O’Loughlin and Managing Editor Ryan Di Corpo created a weekend with opportunities for participants to meet other LGBTQA (allies) Catholics and build community.

Participants included LGBTQA lay people, clergy and ministers from Canada, Belgium, Lithuania, Italy, the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, Argentina and the United States. Panel discussions included “LGBTQ Ministry in Parishes,” “The Bible and Homosexuality,” and “Transgender Catholics and the Church.”

This year’s most notable keynote speaker was renowned iconographer and activist Fr. William Hart McNichols. He took us on a personal journey through his art and iconography, including an image he created for this year’s conference. He told us that he first imagined Jesus washing the feet of the LGBTQ community, and then he imagined Pope Francis washing the feet of Jesus and his LGBTQ followers, and so we have the icon: “The Foot Washing."

A painting depicting the pope kissing and watching the feet of a Christ figure in jeans and a hoodie.

Fr. William Hart Nichols created this icon, "The Foot Washing." (Photo courtesy of Br. Jay Woods, OFM)

Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, presider at the opening Mass, stressed the need for unity amid a time in our country and Church’s history when “violence, the forfeiture of civility in public discourse and the disavowal of once well-known hallowed values can be found in both institutions.”

Fr. Mark Bosco, SJ, the vice president of Georgetown University, spoke of “the LGBTQ community having to live in this paradox—of being born into the Body of Christ in baptism, experiencing God’s grace, yet all the while being told that you don’t quite fit, feeling that you are not quite valued. This paradox, I suggest, is a form of spiritual suffering.  But as followers of Jesus, we all know that suffering is part of the spiritual path to love, the spiritual path to God’s fullness and redemption.”

Liberation theology reminds us that it is from the paradox of suffering, the suffering of the minores, the suffering of being told you don’t belong, that the chains of suffering and oppression are broken by the kiss of justice and peace. I believe that it is from this paradox, from oppression to justice, that members of the LGBTQ community can be instruments of dialogue, justice and peace by their witness.

Four men stand in a room beside a plant and in front of a crucifix. There is a statue of Jesus Christ behind them.

Photo courtesy of Br. Jay Woods, OFM.