The Vatican has approved new guidelines that opens the door for gay men in Italy to become priests.

The New York Times on Jan. 10 reported the Vatican approved the guidelines the Italian Bishop’s Conference adopted last November.

The guidelines specifically stipulate seminaries cannot reject applicants simply because of their sexual orientation, as long as they remain celibate. They will remain in place for what the Times described as a “3-year trial period.”

“This development is a big step forward,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a press release. “It clarifies previous ambiguous statements about gay seminary candidates, which viewed them with suspicion. This ambiguity caused lots of fear and discrimination in the church, way beyond the arena of seminary admissions.”

“This new clarification treats gay candidates in the same way that heterosexual candidates are treated,” added DeBernardo. “That type of equal treatment is what the church should be aiming for in regards to all LGBTQ+ issues.”

The Vatican in 2016 reaffirmed gay men becoming priests.

“The church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture,’” reads a document the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy released that Pope Francis approved.

The document essentially reaffirmed the Vatican’s 2005 position on the issue. (Benedict XVI was pope at the time.)

The Vatican’s tone towards LGBTQ and intersex issues has softened since Francis became pope in 2013.

Francis publicly backs civil unions for same-sex couples, and has described laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust.” Francis in 2023 said priests can bless same-sex couples.

The pontiff earlier this month named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego, who DeBernardo notes has made “strong positive statements regarding LGBTQ+ issues,” as the new archbishop of Washington. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brian Burch, the president and co-founder of CatholicVote, an anti-LGBTQ Catholic group, to become the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Francis during a 2023 interview with an Argentine newspaper described gender ideology as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in the world because “it blurs differences and the value of men and women.” A declaration the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released last March with Francis’s approval condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.”

FRANCE

Clips and memes of the song “Nobody Mourns the Wicked,” from the hit movie musical “Wicked” went viral in France this week after the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Rally party. Le Pen was 96 when he passed away on Jan. 7 and was the father of current National Rally leader Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s as a politician with his frequent tirades against immigrants, Muslims, and queer people. He ran for president of France five times, making it to the second round in the 2002 election, where he was defeated in an historic landslide.

In 2018, a court found Le Pen guilty of spreading hate toward homosexuals on three separate incidents and ordered him to pay fines. He had claimed that pedophilia was linked to homosexuality in a 2016 blog video, had told a reporter that having gays in his party was like having too much salt in soup, and then said the husband of a gay police officer who had been killed in a terrorist attack should not have been allowed to speak at the officer’s state funeral. 

In the 1980s, he also advocated for the forced isolation of anyone living with HIV.

But his controversial statements don’t end there. He frequently voiced support for those who collaborated with the Nazi regime in World War II and downplayed the Holocaust, suggesting it was a mere “detail” of history and that mass murders never took place. Those remarks saw him fined by multiple courts over the years.

His daughter Marine took over the National Rally in 2011, and in 2015, the party expelled him over his refusal to attend a disciplinary hearing over his repeated Holocaust denial.

Shortly after news of LePen’s death broke, hundreds of people gathered at Paris’s Place de la République to celebrate, with many waving Pride flags and tossing confetti in celebration. The hashtag “NoOneMournsTheWicked” started trending on French X.

In a fun bit of transatlantic synchronicity, the same hashtag trended in the U.S. three days later, when news broke of the death of notorious 80s homophobe Anita Bryant.

AUSTRALIA

Melbourne’s major Pride festival Midsumma has become the focus of controversy this week, with the lobby group Transgender Victoria announcing it won’t participate in this year’s parade and a group of masked vandals defacing businesses that were showing support for the festival.

Overnight on Jan. 8, businesses along the parade route that supported the festival were vandalized with posters and spray paint calling for a boycott of Midsumma. The vandals were caught on video surveillance but have not been identified.

The posters variously decry the commercialization of Pride and the participation of police in the festival.  

“We will not be satisfied with a commercialized gay identity, that denies the intrinsic links between queer struggle and challenging power,” says one poster. “We are dedicated to fighting the assimilationist monster with a devastating mobilization of queer brilliance.” 

“Queer liberation not rainbow capitalism,” says another, which lists Midsumma’s sponsors as Amazon, Woolworth’s, AGL, and L’Oreal. 

“No Pride on stolen land,” says another poster.

Businesses were able to clean up most of the damage before the start of business Thursday.

On Sunday, Transgender Victoria,, the state’s leading trans advocacy group, posted on its Instagram account that it was suspending its participation in the festival, citing concerns over police involvement.

“A recent community forum and survey conducted by TGV have confirmed a deep and pervasive discontent among TGD [trans and gender diverse] people regarding their interactions with and treatment by Victoria Police,” the statement says. “In light of these concerns, TGV’s Committee has approved a one-year suspension of participation in the Midsumma Pride March. Our future participation is contingent on Victoria Police accepting accountability for measurable change.”

TGV’s statement says it will participate in other Midsumma events and will schedule a Trans Pride Picnic as an alternative to the Pride march. 

Last year’s Pride march was a site of conflict, when a group of about 50 protesters doused a contingent of police officers marching in the parade with pink paint. Officers were seen on video pushing protesters out of the way. The police officers had agreed to join the parade out of uniform and without weapons. 

This year’s Midsumma Festival runs from Jan. 19 to Feb. 9 in Melbourne, with the Midsumma Pride March on Feb. 2 and Victoria’s Pride Street Party on Feb 9.

A prominent LGBTQ activist in Cameroon is facing terrorism charges.

Alice Nkom, a human rights lawyer and board president of Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale, a group known by the acronym Redhac that translates to Human Rights Defenders Network in Central Africa, on Jan. 2 received a summons from Cameroon’s National Gendarmerie, or national military intelligence.

The summons follows a complaint that Lilian Engoulou, general coordinator of the Observatory for Societal Development, filed.

Engoulou has accused Nkom of attempting to endanger state security, financing terrorism, and funding separatist groups in the northwest and southwest regions of the country that are fighting for independence from Cameroon.

Nkom in recent months has been vocal over the human rights situation in the country, including LGBTQ rights.

Territorial Administration Minister Paul Atanga Nji last month suspended Redhac and sealed the organization’s offices for alleged illegal and exorbitant funding and lack of compliance with government regulations on how NGOs should be run.

Nkom, however, removed the seals. This action prompted authorities in Littoral province where Redhoc’s offices are located to issue the summons on Dec. 19 after she did not appear.

Nkom has described the summons as a political witch hunt, stating she doesn’t acknowledge the Observatory for Societal Development. Nkom added she broke the seals because authorities placed them illegally.

“At the beginning of the year, a new summons, this time issued by the police, at the request of the military court, with accusations of financing terrorism, following the complaint of an association that I ignore from its existence, its leaders, or even the date of its creation,” she said.

“Human rights defenders are small, fragile but courageous, against the authoritarian and totalitarian drift of a state,” added Nkom. “Like the dikes facing the rising tide of injustice, they stand there firm, despite their vulnerability. I am an advocate, a human rights defender, a humanist. Humanity cannot be divided into categories. We are one, all connected by the same dignity.”

Maurice Kamto, a fierce critic of President Paul Biya who is a lawyer and leads the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement political party, said Nkom should not face judicial and political harassment. Kamto offered to represent her pro bono.

“She is an eminent figure in the public life of our country,” said Kamto. “She is fighting many battles. We do not share all these battles, and it is not all her battles that are at issue today.”

Kamto further described Nkom as “an important voice in the public arena of our country.”

“It is therefore, unacceptable that she should be the object of the judicial and political harassment that the authorities are currently inflicting on her,” said Kamto. “We cannot stand by and watch this happen.”

Consensual same-sex sexual relations are criminalized under Section 347 of Cameroon’s penal code with up to five years in prison. A 2010 law states whoever uses electronic communication devices to make “a sexual proposal to a person of the same sex” faces up to two years in prison.

A number of Cameroonians in recent years have been arrested — and tortured — for engaging in same-sex sexual relations.

A Human Rights Watch report notes Cameroonian security forces between February and April 2021 arrested at least 27 people, including a child, for alleged consensual same-sex conduct or gender nonconformity. Some of those arrested were beaten.

Biya’s daughter, Brenda Biya, last year posted an image to her Instagram page of her kissing her ex-girlfriend, Layyons Valença, and saying her wish was for them to live in peace as a couple. Brenda Biya deleted the post after it sparked controversy in Cameroon.

Nkom is expected to appear before the National Gendarmerie on Jan. 14, which is also her 80th Birthday.