LISBON (LifeSiteNews) — The prominently pro-LGBT Jesuit Father James Martin is set to address participants of World Youth Day, as he joins the Jesuit team who are hosting a series of events in the official World Youth Day (WYD) program.
Martin revealed his update via a July 27 social media post, stating that he was set to speak at the Jesuit’s pre-WYD Magis event, before speaking at WYD itself.
Dear friends: God willing, I’ll be travelling to Lisbon tonight to speak at @magis2023, the gathering of students from Jesuit schools from around the world, and then at World Youth Day @wyd_en. So I won’t be posting as much here. Also, I would very much appreciate your prayers!
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) July 27, 2023
World Youth Day runs from August 1 through 6, in Lisbon, Portugal, with Pope Francis set to join the young people for over half of the multi-day event. It is comprised of numerous activities, prayer sessions, conferences, music workshops and informal conferences and meetings.
Underpinning the key events of each day is the “Youth Festival,” which runs throughout the entire day, and offers participants various options of activities to join. It is in some of these that Martin will encounter the WYD pilgrims, since the Jesuits are organizing numerous events at the Largo da Misericórdia.
READ: Fr. James Martin’s pro-gay advocacy hurts same-sex attracted Catholics
According to Martin’s own America Magazine, the Largo da Misericórdia is intended to be “a space that will be open to the whole world at the heart of the city and is a result of a partnership between the Society of Jesus and the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa [a charitable institution in Lisbon, Portugal, which provides social services and support to those in need].”
More in-depth details are provided only via the official WYD phone app, although is it as yet unclear which particular events Martin will be involved in and what he will be speaking on.
But some of the Jesuits’ events include:
- “Truth and Tolerance: On being Christian in a pluralistic age.”
- “Listen to your Body/yourself.”
- “Living out the ecologic turning in faith”
Martin is also speaking at the Jesuit-run MAGIS 2023 event. According to America, the 10-day event held prior to World Youth Day brings “2,000 young people from 82 countries connected with the Society of Jesus to Lisbon.”
The MAGIS event is prestigious, as evidenced by virtue of the names attached to it. The Jesuit’s Portuguese provincial superior will offer the opening Mass, while the Jesuit Superior General – the “black pope” as he is colloquially known in Rome – will offer the closing Mass. Francis has also sent a personal message greeting the participants.
Martin’s participation at the World Youth Day event – which is self-described as a “a pilgrimage, a celebration of youth, an expression of the universal Church and an intense moment of evangelization for the youth world” with a “clearly evident” Catholic identity – is cause for concern for faithful Catholics.
The notoriously pro-LGBT Jesuit, also a member of the Dicastery for Communications, has enjoyed increasing papal favor despite his longstanding record of promoting LGBT ideology in dissent from Catholic teaching.
He has also promoted an image drawn from a series of blasphemous, homoerotic works showing Jesus Christ as a homosexual, promoted same-sex civil unions, and described viewing God as male as “damaging.”
But his participation at the 2023 WYD is not without precedent. In 2018, the Vatican invited him to speak at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Ireland, on “Exploring how Parishes can support those families with members who identify as LGBTI+.” In recent months, Martin has also enjoyed considerable and consistent support from Francis, despite the priest’s record of heterodoxy on numerous issues of Catholic teaching.
READ: Pope Francis calls Fr. James Martin a man of ‘values’ teaching the ‘way of communication with God’
In November 2022, Francis described his fellow Jesuit as “a man who has values, a communicator who also knows how to teach you the way of communication with God.”
Yet Martin’s attendance at WYD is perhaps less surprising when the description of the event is examined more closely: “Although its Catholic identity is clearly evident, WYD opens its doors to everyone, no matter how close to or distant from the Church they are.”