On the way in the diocese of Padua for an inclusive church with Christians LGBT+ and their family members

Reflections by Lucia Valentini of the Parents Group of people LGBTQIA+ of Padua

Between February 28 and March 2, 2025, the third edition of an appointment organized by the Emmanuele groups (adults LGBT), the almond (young LGBTQIA+) and parents of people LGBTQIA+took place in Padua.

The three groups, in synergy, have conceived and have been given a time of formation, reflection, listening and prayer at the main home of spirituality of the diocese of Padua: Villa Immacolata, on the Euganean hills.

The Sunday morning, on the other hand, was dedicated to an event open to citizenship, hosted at the Jesuit center of the Antonianum in the city.

Professor Pilar Escoterin Soza, professor of Psychology of prosocial communication at the universities of Barcelona in Spain and Valparadiso in Chile, led the members of the three groups to ask questions on the ways in which everyone asks himself in dialogue with Christian churches and in particular with the Catholic one in terms of LGBTQIA+ people and relationships with them.

By drawing on studies of sociology, psychology and linguistic and the numerous professional experiences of mediation of conflicts, he illustrated prosocial and assertive methods and tools that can facilitate mutual understanding even starting from distant positions. Acquiring metacognitive skills and cognitive empathy is essential for creating authentic and effective listening spaces. The result was a lively and empathic dialogue with the teacher in which everyone was able to find a safe place in which to express impatiences and prestances, but also desires and determination.

In the afternoon the attention moved to a delicate legal, ethical and emotional theme: the filiation in homo -affective couples. Professor Bianca Checchini, expert in family law and professor of private law at the University of Padua, retraced the fundamental stages of current legislation relating to the legal status of son and has pointed out the values ​​that are at the origin.

He then accompanied, with rigor and clarity, to understand how reality is overcoming the existing legal categories in speed and case history has become urgent to fill the current legislative emptiness so that the right can continue to play its role as a social regulator and guardian of fundamental rights. In fact, it has emerged, in fact, that there are numerous concrete situations, such as the new forms of family and emotional relationships, which still find no recognition and regulation in the Italian legal system, with the risk of leaving the rights of the people involved without protection, in particular of minors. He therefore hypothesized some research and interpretation tracks that could do the existing.

The intervention and the debate was followed by the testimony of two young mothers who, after having united civilly, decided to have a child, through medically assisted fertilization, and are now facing the path of simple adoption, or the adoption in particular cases pursuant to art. 44 l 184/93, not legitimizing, for the non -biological mother. Their decision -making path required discernment and medical, ethical and legal decisions to be made on the basis of the values ​​on which their family are building. It was very significant and methodologically formative to face a theme so complex from complementary perspectives.

On Sunday 2 March, in a Padua illuminated by a clear sky and wrapped in a sparkling and crystalline air, in the festive atmosphere of Prato della Valle ready to welcome the traditional parade of the noisy and colorful allegorical floats, the third appointment took place: Church: Locanda open to each person for a pastoral tailor also to the Christian people LGBTQIA+
A title that looks like an entry into point of feet in an uncertain ground and an extremely evocative urban scenography for those who can read in estrangement.

With great wisdom and communicative art, the young adults of the almond group took the present by the hand, bringing them to the seventies-2000s, through testimonies and memories, to discover the "prehistory" of the presence of homosexual people (only of that was whispered then) Christian in the city, determined to live their faith and ask for spaces of training and prayer in clandestinity.

At the dazzling evidence that LGBTQI+ people have always existed and that there are convinced believers and Catholics among them, a round table has opened that saw the participation of the parishes, in the figure of the vicar in the pastoral care, of the Catholic Action of Padua, of the Methodological Coordination Agesci del Veneto, of the Consultation of the diocesan and provincial secular secular aggregations.

A symposium, of great prophetic intensity, hardly conceivable only a few years ago.
Everyone had the opportunity to tell each other and put their positions, their intent and their resistances on the table. The debate that has followed has highlighted the experiences of people who experience on their meat isolation and exclusion and the urgency to take clear positions in an uncepted political and cultural context.

If this is the news, it is more difficult to tell the shiny or bright looks and the faces of everyone. Faces and eyes that walk every day, work, often teach and educate, pray and try to live the Gospel because they exist and not despite being LGBTQIA+. Each of them has a name, a story, a future to be built in truth and freedom.

All this is gushed like a source of good water in the prayers and songs of the final mass. If the good words are generative and whether to walk in the light of the word and a clear and loving look of the other are conditions to live in the truth, well then in Padua, trees that will give good time to debt time have been placed in Padua.