Last week, when I made a short list of some of the cool things Pope Francis has done thus far, I completely forgot to talk about the way he’s changed (rhetorically, at least) the Church’s stance on the LGBT community. Pope Francis is not just Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, you see, he was also given the same honor by The Advocate, the American LGBT-rights magazine. It’s a big deal! I like the Photoshopped NOH8 on his cheek too – it’s a very provocative, interesting cover choice.

Anyway, The Advocate has a massive write-up about “the year in gay rights” and why people like Edie Windsor and Ted Olson weren’t named the person of the year (although they did make the list of “most important people of the year”). The Advocate says they chose Pope Francis because “Pope Francis is leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics all over the world. There are three times as many Catholics in the world than there are citizens in the United States. Like it or not, what he says makes a difference.” Here are some highlights from the cover story:

Pope Francis’s stark change in rhetoric from his two predecessors — both who were at one time or another among The Advocate’s annual Phobie Awards — makes what he’s done in 2013 all the more daring. First there’s Pope John Paul II, who gay rights activists protested during a highly publicized visit to the United States in 1987 because of what had become known as the “Rat Letter” — an unprecedented damning of homosexuality as “intrinsically evil.” It was written by one of his cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI. Since 1978, one of those two men had commanded the influence of the Vatican — until this year.

…As Argentina’s archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio opposed marriage equality’s eventual passage there, saying in 2010 that it’s a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” When Bergoglio became pope, GLAAD was quick to point out that he’d once called adoption by same-sex couples a form of discrimination against children.

But it’s actually during Pope Francis’s time as cardinal that his difference from Benedict and hard-liners in the church became apparent. As same-sex marriage looked on track to be legalized in Argentina, Bergoglio argued privately that the church should come out for civil unions as the “lesser of two evils.” That’s all according to Pope Francis’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin. Argentine gay activist Marcelo Márquez backed up the story, telling The New York Times in March that Bergoglio “listened to my views with a great deal of respect. He told me that homosexuals need to have recognized rights and that he supported civil unions, but not same-sex marriage.”

As pope, he has not yet said the Catholic Church supports civil unions. But what Francis does say about LGBT people has already caused reflection and consternation within his church. The moment that grabbed headlines was during a flight from Brazil to Rome. When asked about gay priests, Pope Francis told reporters, according to a translation from Italian, “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?”

… Francis’s view on how the Catholic Church should approach LGBT people was best explained in his own words during an in-depth interview with America magazine in September. He recalled, “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

He said that when he was a cardinal, “I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During [a recent] return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”

He continued, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”

[From Advocate]

The Advocate goes to list various secondary stories about Pope Francis’s willingness to open dialogue around LGBT issues, and how he surrounds himself and promotes some of the more pro-tolerance priests and bishops within the church. Apparently, Pope Francis is well aware that if he used his platform to stridently condemn gay marriage and/or homosexuality in general (like Pope Benedict did), the church would share in the blame for hate crimes, for the lack of tolerance in all God’s creations, etc. It’s an interesting piece, and I’m interested in seeing what Pope Francis does in 2014. Will the conservative hard-line Catholics try to reel him in? Or will they let him off the leash even further?

Photos courtesy of WENN.