WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Several young Catholics prayed the Holy Rosary outside Georgetown University this weekend during Father James Martin’s pro-LGBT Outreach Conference.
Members of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) Student Action, along with many young faithful, peacefully prayed the Rosary outside the Jesuit university after receiving over 31,000 signatures for a petition opposing the June 19–21 conference, entitled “Walking Side by Side: Celebrating Five Years of Outreach Ministries.”
In addition to Martin himself, the conference featured several other notoriously heterodox speakers, such as Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington, D.C., Father James Keenan, S.J., and Sister Nancy Corcoran, CSJ, who have contradicted the Church’s teaching on homosexual “marriage” and gender ideology.
Young Catholics gathered at the gates of Georgetown University to protest Fr. James Martin’s pro-LGBT “Outreach 2026” conference.
Not only are the event speakers at odds with the Bible, but also against natural law, papal documents, the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of… pic.twitter.com/KBzE2rvsIp
— TFP Student Action (@tfpsa) June 21, 2026
John Ritchie, the director of TFP Student Action, told LifeSiteNews that Rosary protest was important because “when errors against the Faith are promoted publicly” faithful Catholics “have a duty to defend Church teaching.”
“Our Lord said, ‘Whoever acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father in Heaven.’ Public prayer serves as a visible witness to the truth and offers reparation for the offenses committed against God,” he said. “We went to gates of Georgetown to proclaim that 2,000 years of Catholic teaching cannot be reconciled with the promotion of unnatural vice or the falsehood of transgender ideology.”
“No amount of dialogue can turn a mortal sin into a virtue,” he added.
Indeed, while the Outreach website and conference “celebrates and elevates the experiences of ‘LGBTQ Catholics’ within the life of the Church” without calling them to repentance, the Catholic Church teaches that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law” and that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered.”
READ: Cdl. McElroy praises Vatican downplaying of homosexual sin during James Martin’s conference
The Catechism is very clear that homosexual activity can never be approved and repeats that “(h)omosexual persons are called to chastity.”
Ritchie further underscored the fact that that more than 31,000 Catholics signed TFP’s petition and several young people took the time to publicly protest the heretical conference “demonstrates that many young Catholics are deeply concerned and do not agree with Fr. Martin’s promotion of the sin of pride.”
“The month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. But the homosexual revolution has been trying to replace God with pride month. It is especially tragic to see a Jesuit priest join forces with that effort to celebrate sin and dethrone God,” he added.
Ritchie noted that while some Georgetown students thanked TFP for being there, several conference attendees “mocked and jeered” at them as they prayed, with some of these individuals wearing blasphemous rainbow-themed religious items. One priest even accused their volunteers of being “closeted homosexuals.”
“At the same time, our volunteers remained calm, and focused on praying the Rosary,” he told LifeSite.
In May, about a month before the conference, TFP Student Action launched a petition calling on both Cardinal McElroy and Georgetown University to cancel the event, citing the heterodoxy of several of the event’s speakers.
One of these speakers, Fr. Keenan, testified against H.3190, a proposed constitutional amendment in Massachusetts that would have defined marriage as a stable union between a man and a woman, on the erroneous grounds that it was “contrary to Catholic teaching on social justice.”
Another conference speaker, Sister Corcoran, has said she believes the Church’s teaching on transgenderism is “wrong” and “awful.”
“I knew I was a Catholic nun, I knew the awfulness of the teaching of the Catholic Church, and I knew they were wrong,” she said during a podcast.
The Church teaches that God creates every individual male or female at the moment of his or her conception and that sex is an immutable trait that “characterizes man and woman not only on the physical level but also on the psychological and spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions.”
READ: New Jersey church under Cardinal Tobin celebrates ‘Pride Mass’ for eighth straight year
The 1975 Vatican document Persona Humana warned against the tenets of the modern transgender movement, stating “there can be no true promotion of man’s dignity unless the essential order of his nature is respected.”
Catholic teaching also condemns bodily mutilation and sterilization as “against the moral law” and denounces gender ideology.
Corcoran has also praised the blasphemous “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” “I rejoice with the joy and healing craziness of the Sisters [of Perpetual Indulgence],” she previously told the heterodox National Catholic Reporter (NCR).
Ritchie told LifeSite that Corcoran approached the protest and he had the opportunity to challenge her support of gender ideology, citing Genesis’ teaching that God created mankind “male and female.”
Other notable speakers at the dissident conference include Fr. Martin, Cardinal McElroy, Kerry A. Robinson, the president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, and “transgender” activist “Michael” Sennett. 
