The 3volteGenitori Network was born for believing parents with LGBT sons and daughters

Presentation of 3VolteGenitori Network made by Corrado del Davide Group of Parma all 'Online national assembly of the 3VolteGenitori Network dated 14 February 2021

Today (14 February 2021) we must celebrate an event: the National Network of believing parents with LGBT sons and daughters is born which will be called "3TimesParents".

An already existing reality of 127 parents of 14 different regions, many collected in 10 groups born in recent years, many other single parents, who nevertheless organize themselves and take shape, having two fundamental things in common: being parents of a homosexual/transsexual son or daughter and believing in a God who loves everyone and makes no distinction between her children gathered in a beautiful, lovable Church, a mother who embraces everyone.

I was entrusted with the task of starting to outline the physiognomy, the traits that characterize this Network and I willingly accepted.

To do this I take inspiration from the song of Isaiah who on the first Sunday of Advent presented us, following the intuition that Michela, my wife, had on that Sunday: “This seems to be the song that talks about us, our experience, of our network ". So I thank Michela first of all, the best part of me and I thank you in advance you who will have the patience to listen to me.

Isaiah's song says:

"Consoles, console my people, says your God. Talk to the heart of Jerusalem and shout them that His slavery is over ... climb on a high mountain, you who go happy News in Zion; Raise your rumor, you who go happy news in Jerusalem ". (Is 40.1,2,9)

I highlighted the sentences that I will go to comment.

"Consulates, console my people"

In the reality we have lived, many we asked ourselves: “But what happens to us? Why just to us? What will others, friends, relatives, our community say? What were we wrong? " And many, if not everyone, we have cried. However, our "purified by tears" gaze as Pope Francis says, allowed us to empathize with our sons and daughters LGBT, to rediscover them and accept them in their entirety, in their entirety.

These tears made us discover or rediscover a father of the skies who welcomes everyone, that everyone wants and awaits that everyone consoles. Yes, we were consoled!

Many of us have embarked on a journey of exodus, exile, desert: we left the lands that we knew, by friends, groups, from the communities to which they belong to an unknown land, full of obstacles, where we also suffered the Thirst and hunger, trusting only a word: “Go where I will show you. I will be with you, by your side ”.

Then in this journey it has often happened to experience the merciful and provident love of the father precisely through the often mysterious encounter with other parents and children who before us had moved to this journey and who reinforced and supported us. We found oasis to refresh ourselves.

With the love with which we have been consoled we can console others, we must console others.

From here, from this deep experience so intimate, that he changed our lives, finds his why "3volteeni". We loved our children by putting them in the world and then the second time by welcoming them in their different way of loving. Finally we became parents the third time when we left the closet to help other LGBT children and other parents on this journey. And in particular we care about parents with children and daughters in a transition path, in a path that we can only remotely imagine how complex, long, painful: you are the first in the hearts of all of us !!

"Talk to the heart"

This experience is teaching us and has taught us to speak first of all to our heart, to return to ourselves, to reflect on the profound meaning of life and faith. To speak also to our bridegroom and our bride with freedom and trust. Sometimes with conflicts, suffering and abandonments but always with truth: from person to person.

We are also learning to listen to the heart of our sons and daughters LGBT and the first thing we feel to say is: thanks. Thank you for opening your heart with your coming out, thanks for revealing/donated the most intimate and secret part of you.

This experience is teaching us to listen with truth the heart of God who is the Father and Mother, made up of immense mercy and tenderness for each and for everyone.

The tears, as we said, have changed our gaze making us seek and see the good that is there and that before we did not see and have expanded our hearts towards other realities of marginalization, of the suburb.

For all this we dare to call ourselves: "Lucky Parents".

Talking to the heart but being "ready to respond to anyone who wonders the hope that it is we" as the apostle Pietro reminds us. To do this, we are called to deepen, to train, to study to understand with increasing clarity how to drop the Word of God in this complex reality that we are experiencing, with all its anthropological, psychological, social, political and ecclesial implications, which brings with it.

We also commit ourselves to speaking frankly, because love never speaks the language of fear, even to the heart of the Church and our pastors, speaking to them not about ideas or theories but about people, about our children, about their hearts. and their life that we know well. Speak to the heart of the Church so that it becomes "the Church of the heart".

“Slavery is over”

We too were slaves to a culture, an ideology, a historical process, a distorted vision of the Word of God that left us imprisoned and locked in our closet. We were finally liberated from both the studies of the humanities and biblical exegesis and theology, as well as meeting other parents and children.

Finally we can also see these LGBT children of ours, like all the others, as beautiful as they are, with their diversity that becomes wealth, with their right to love and happiness and to be loved for who they are, with the ability to be gift for each other. Many of these children have abandoned the Church but many have continued to hope against hope all these decades keeping the faith alive and this is one of the greatest gifts they can give to the Church.

“Climb a high mountain”

Those who love have a duty to tell the world the presence of love and this verse reminds us that our choice of visibility, of coming out, is a right choice, it is a choice for the good of many that will be even if tiring and sometimes painful. It is a choice of service to others. This verse recalls the Gospel of Jesus when it reminds us that the lamp must not be hidden, but must be put on the moggio to illuminate all those who still seek.

"You who go happy news"

What are the happy news we can tell? Not those reported by others but those we have seen, those we have touched, those we have heard. We are talking about the lives and hearts of these "found" children and daughters.

Then we can testify to the fact that they are capable of a profound faith as we have hardly met. One day Father Pino Piva, Jesuit, in a retirement of Lent for parents and children LGBT told us: “The glory of the Lord manifested himself in your way of living and testifying the faith and desert of your condition has turned into A road where the Lord comes to meet you personally. "

Then we can say that they are capable of loyalty, altruism, loyalty as well as joy and irony and also their different way of loving leads to personal growth, to self -realization to become a gift to others. This personal growth also leads to them to a spiritual fruitfulness that is called harmony, with oneself and with the society around.

These sons and daughters are teaching us to love the other, all the others as they are, without "if" and without "but", they take us helping to transform our heart of stone into a heart of meat.

Here then is the purpose of this network: make sure that the good that is in various experiences and good news is shared. Make sure that hope grows, that nobody feels excluded, that nobody feels only or anguished.

We are on the net respecting the step of the last, to help us another, to be at service and circulate the good we have received.

"Raise your voice force"

We are asked to speak aloud, sometimes even striving to speak when we prefer to keep silent and to do it for our children and for ourselves, but also and above all for the others who will come after us. We have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of and, as Jesus says, "what you have heard in the secret to shouting it on the roofs".

In addition to personal contacts, we will have to exploit all the technological means to bring our voice, our testimonies also to the ears of the deaf, of those who do not want to hear.

"In Jerusalem"

We are in the Church, we are Church and we are there and we remain, aware of the dignity and grace that derives from us both from our baptism and our ministry of spouses and parents. We are there and we stay with adult Christians.

We speak in the Church and the Church with our presence and with our actions: we want to build bridges and not raise walls.

In the Church we feel without false modesty as prophets: we have touched the role of prophecy, that is, to testify and make evident signs and gifts that the spirit performs in LGBT people and that are already present but that few still see. We also know that as prophets we will have to pay for this.

We commit ourselves with all our strength to keep our sons and our LGBT daughters close with one hand and not to leave them absolutely and with the other the mother Church aware that it is in it that we have been generated to the faith in Jesus. It is there Mother in faith. It can be sometimes ugly or sick, but she is always our mother. We strive to paint a new Church, made of personal relationships, from heart to heart between us and with the Lord and we invite others to enter.

Then we walk courageously, because the strength we have does not come to us but it is a gift that has been given to us and it is a courage that serves for others too.

We walk with the trust he finds in the Holy Spirit, who speaks to our conscience, his foundation and with the freedom that gives us the fact of feeling all of us loved and desired children by the Father.

I thank you and embrace you all with force and tenderness. Avanti all. Forward together !!

Groups of Christian parents with LGBT children present themselves (PDF file)

Bologna, Families group on the way

Civitavecchia, Accompanying group for parents with LGBT children of the diocese of Civitavecchia-Tarquinia

Florence, Kairos Parents group

Puglia, L'Ulivo della Vita group

Parma, Davide group

Pescara, group we are all unique pieces

Reggio Emilia, Prayer group for people of different sexual orientation, their parents and friends of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Pastoral Unit

Rome, Word group and words

Venice-Mestre, group all children of idio