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Numerous groups and activists are expected to participate in a series of conference, forums and press gatherings sponsored by a wide array of well-funded international organisations.Shutterstock

As pro-family and pro-life advocates gather in Rome this week to have their voices heard during the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family, so too are the world’s homosexualist leaders.

“LGBT” Catholic activists from Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Portugal, the US, Chile, Switzerland, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Russia, Italy and Britain are expected to participate in a series of conference, forums and press gatherings sponsored by a wide array of well-funded international organizations, including the European Union.

A coalition of “Italian Christian LGBT groups” organized by the Forum of Homosexual, Bisexual and Transsexual Italian Christians (FCOI) will attend the “Let’s witness our hope,” forum this weekend, October 4-5, at Centro Pellegrini Santa Teresa Couderc, in Rome. They look forward to exchanging “experiences and testimonies on the theme of ‘faith and homosexuality,’” and to “lay the foundations for the future in our churches.”

The “Ways of Love” forum, October 4-5, aims to present “a serious proposal for a complete acceptance of LGBT people in the Church” to the Synod bishops. The forum will feature a number of international celebrities of the global Catholic “LGBT” movement, including Geoffrey Robinson, a former bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Robinson, a member of a group of ultra-liberal bishops who authored a petition to Pope Francis asking for “Vatican III,” will also speak on October 8 at a conference sponsored by Nuova Proposta, a Christian LGBT organization in Rome. He will speak on “how the Catholic Church can begin a new understanding of LGBT people.”

The main “Ways of Love” conference, funded by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of the Netherlands, “aims to give the fathers of the Synod suggestions on how to fully include LGBT people, same-sex couples and their families in pastoral care because ‘A debate on families can’t be discussed without considering all kinds of families based on love.’”

Citing the Synod’s preparatory documents, organizers praised the Church for having “finally decided to openly reflect on these issues.”

Sr. Jeannine Gramick, the co-founder of New Ways Ministry, that works in the US to promote acceptance of homosexual activity inside the Catholic Church, wrote in the far-left National Catholic Reporter that she will be attending the conference. She wrote that actively homosexual Catholics are looking only for “positive words” instead of “hurtful messages of rejection” from the Synod.

She compared same-sex unions with the Holy Family of Mary, Jesus and his adoptive father, St. Joseph, revered by Catholics particularly for his angelic chastity.

“LGBT Catholics hope that the synod will recognize the variety of families in the Christian community and include all kinds in its pastoral ministry. After all, if Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, the Holy Family was a nontraditional one. Families are all brought together by love, not biology.”

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She said that “LGBT Catholics” have found hope in the current pontificate, saying they believe that Pope Francis “has a caring and welcoming instinct and sees that his flock is hurting.”

But Patrick Buckley, the representative of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children at the UN in Geneva, told LifeSiteNews that the Catholic Church is not failing to offer homosexual people pastoral care. However, that care cannot be what the homosexualist activists want.

“It is disingenuous to claim that the church is failing homosexual people. The Church upholds the truth about human sexuality and is always compassionate to those who have same sex attraction.

“The comparison of same sex relationships with the Holy Family is outrageous and must be firmly resisted by all right thinking people.”

Meanwhile, activists from around the world will attend the “first ever” “World Congress for Homosexual Catholic Associations” in Portimão, Portugal from October 6-8 where they will discuss “the inauguration of a world-wide association for those who work for LGBT equality in the Church.”

The statement from the “Building Bridges” conference warned against a “view” of homosexuality in the Church that has been “distorted by prejudices, fears and sorrows.” They are asking for a “new pastoral approach: a pastoral reconciliation, that knowing how to read the signs of times, (according to the challenge of Vatican II) sets aside closed visions of the world, that no longer answer to the needs of our time.”

They will ask for a “revisit” of the Bible, and a “new look directed to Jesus.”

Speaking for Voice of the Family, a coalition of life and family group in Rome for the Extraordinary Synod, Maria Madise said that the Church has indeed addressed the pastoral approach on homosexuality. The problem is, she says, that “we’ve never implemented the great advice offered in 1986.”

Penned by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, and published by order of Pope John Paul II, the 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons encouraged Bishops to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses.

“No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin,” the document said.

“But we wish to make it clear that departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral.

“Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral.”

“We have had virtual silence from the pulpits on this matter for half a century,” Madise added. “It is time to preach the truth in love, without fear of being castigated by secularists.”