The Full Queer Catholic Joy Series 2025

Photo by Raphael Renter, Unsplash

For Pride Month 2025, we invited queer Catholics to answer a simple but radical question: what does queer Catholic joy actually look like? Too often, the narrative around LGBTQ+ Catholics focuses only on trauma and rejection. Those stories matter, but they’re not the whole story. This series—born from an Easter-season call for reflections and delayed after Pope Francis’s death—centers the voices of queer Catholics who find joy because of who they are, not in spite of it. Through personal stories and our own reflections, we explore how joy shows up in bodies, faith, and communities that embrace both queerness and Catholicism as holy.

1. Archiving is Sacred Work by Emma Cieslik
   
   In her reflection on queer Catholic joy, Emma explores how archiving and oral history become sacred practices of devotion and resistance for LGBTQ+ Catholics. Drawing on her work with the Queer and Catholic Oral History Project, the Rainbow History Project, and broader queer spiritual activism, she describes the ritual of recording stories—both painful and liberating—as a prayerful way of honoring ancestors, reclaiming erased histories, and grounding queer faith in the physical world. By preserving these testimonies, Emma affirms that joy is not just felt but embodied through community, memory, and the ongoing fight for dignity in both Church and society.
   

2. Love, Friendship, and the Sacred
   
   This entry highlights how LGBTQ+ Catholics find profound joy not despite their identities, but through them—grounded in God’s unconditional love, authentic connection, and sacred belonging. Through reflections from Sr. Jeannine Gramick, Simon Kent Fung, and Jessica Gerhardt, the piece paints a fuller picture of Catholic life, where queer joy emerges in deep trust in God, in honest reconnection with community, and in the grace of sacramental love. Together, their stories challenge narratives of exclusion by affirming that queer Catholic joy is a resilient, communal, and revolutionary act of faith, witnessing to the truth that all are beloved and all have a place in the Body of Christ.

3. Joy is Resistance
   
   Set against the backdrop of Pride Month 2025 and the “No Kings” protests, this entry critiques the misuse of Christian kingship language to justify authoritarianism and calls instead for a joy rooted in defiance of oppressive power. Through Max’s story of embracing his transgender Catholic identity and meeting Pope Francis, and Sr. Luisa Derouen’s decades-long ministry with transgender people, the piece shows how joy—understood as living in one’s truth and embodying the presence of God—is both a gift and a radical, communal stance against exclusion. Queer Catholic joy, it argues, is not a sanitized marketing moment but a sacred, subversive witness to God’s love and justice.
   

4. “Touch and See” by Maureen Rasmussen

   
   In her powerful reflection, Maureen Rasmussen—a Catholic trans woman—shares how her experience of Easter joy is rooted in both suffering and resurrection. After years of trauma, rejection, and invisibility, she describes a transformative moment of joy following her gender affirmation surgery as a tangible experience of God’s love. Drawing from Scripture and her own journey, Maureen affirms that trans people, like the Risen Christ, carry sacred scars and deserve to be seen, touched, and recognized as fully human and fully beloved. Her testimony is a moving reminder that queer Catholic joy is real, resilient, and grounded in divine presence.
   

5. We All Reflect the Image of God by Christine Zuba
   
   In her moving reflection, Christine Zuba—a 68-year-old transgender Catholic woman and lifelong Eucharistic minister—shares how her deepest joy comes from hearing her dignity as a trans person affirmed from the pulpit and embodied in the Church’s actions. Despite resistance from some clergy and U.S. bishops, she finds hope in Pope Francis’ consistent outreach to transgender Catholics and in the quiet yet growing support among priests and laypeople. Reflecting on her own historic meeting with Pope Francis, Christine reminds us that LGBTQ+ people are not an ideology or a threat but beloved children of God whose diversity is a divine gift—and that proclaiming this truth openly is both sacred and necessary.