Pope meets African activists, supports their struggle for LGBTIQ rights
Pope Francis welcomes Ugandan and Ghanaian LGBTIQ rights advocates
Pope Francis this week made a point of supporting the work of African LGBTIQ rights activists, meeting in person with prominent leaders of the LGBTIQ communities in Uganda and Ghana.
In a meeting with Ugandan LGBTIQ rights activist Clare Byarugaba (above), he reiterated his belief that discrimination is a sin, and violence against LGBTIQ people is unacceptable.
“He walks in solidarity with everyone they has been denied their dignity,’ Byarugaba said, “and he further encouraged us to continue defending our rights and to keep fighting.”
Francis also met Tuesday with Ebenezer Peegah, director of the LGBTQI+ rights group Rightify Ghana (below).
“With LGBTQI+ criminalisation rising in Africa, and Ghana’s anti-LGBTQI+ bill pending, we shared our experiences as queer individuals in Ghana and expressed gratitude to the Pope for his progressive stance, especially his opposition to violence and discrimination,” Rightify Ghana shared on X / Twitter. “Pope Francis encouraged us to ‘keep fighting for your rights,’ and that’s exactly what we will do.”
>Rightify Ghana has been actively opposing a harsh anti-LGBTQ bill that won approval from Parliament but has not been endorsed either by the President or the Supreme Court.
Byarugaba described her meeting with the pontiff Tuesday and Wednesday on social media, including Facebook and X / Twitter.
The encounter was “the first time in history [that] Pope Francis met with an LGBTIQ rights advocate from Uganda”, she said.
In previous comments, Francis said in 2023 that homosexuality is not a crime and laws that criminalize it are unjust. At the time, he also said that homosexual behavior is a sin, “but it is also a sin to lack charity with one another.”
In 2018, he reportedly told a gay man “God made you this way and he loves you”.
In 2013, he said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”
This year, however, Pope Francis has run into trouble (and apologized) for using a homophobic slur in non-public discussions of limiting gay men’s admission to seminaries.
After meeting with Francis, Byarugaba wrote:
My heart is extremely full😍😍❤️🏳️🌈🇺🇬🏳️⚧️. For the first time in history, Pope Francis met with an LGBTIQ rights advocate from Uganda. 🇻🇦 His holiness reiterated that discrimination is a sin, and violence against LGBTIQ people is unacceptable. Everybody belongs inside the church, and he doesn’t discriminate, and the church should never discriminate. He walks in solidarity with everyone they has been denied their dignity, and he further encouraged us to continue defending our rights and to keep fighting. #RepealAHA23
She is currently the Equality and Non-discrimination program officer at the human rights advocacy group Chapter Four Uganda.
She founded who also founded PFLAG Uganda and received the 2011 U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Defender Award.
She has been named one of the Grand Marshals for Global Black Pride Atlanta 2024, scheduled for Aug. 31 and Sept. 2.
The Washington Blade reported that Byarugaba said she was “honored to meet” Francis and had briefed him on “the ruinous impact of Uganda’s two in a decade anti-LGBTIQ rights laws,” including the Anti-Homosexuality Act that President Yoweri Museveni signed in 2023, and “the gross human rights violations therein.”
