Perhaps the tide is turning for lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Late last year, I made a 10-day visit to Poland, invited by the Campaign against Homophobia to give public addresses, interviews and a retreat for Faith and Rainbow, a group of LGBT Catholics.

I also had the opportunity to meet with Catholic opinion leaders like Catholic journalist Cezary Gawryś to get a sense of the state of affairs for Polish LGBT Catholics. Gawryś has been exploring the topic of LGBT people in the church.

Serving for two years as a volunteer counselor, he witnessed their efforts — spiritual, mental and also financial — to change their orientation. “I saw gay people who were not very affluent, taking loans to pay for their therapy,” he resumed. “The feeling of not being accepted by the church separated them from the community. They often isolated themselves from other people and carried on with their lonely struggle.”

Katarzyna Jabłońska, co-author with Gawryś of Challenging Love: Christians and Homosexuality, recounted an experience she had while working at home on the book. Her printer broke, and she asked her next-door neighbor, a good friend she had known for many years, to print it for her. Her friend returned, printout in hand, crying profusely, and told Jabłońska that one of her sons was gay. Although they had known each other for years, the neighbor had never spoken about her gay son until the printer incident.

Source: Global Sisters Report – National Catholic Reporter