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Leading US gay Catholic Father John McNeill has died aged 90
Father John McNeill, a leading and pioneering advocate for the acceptance of LGBTI people within the Catholic Church in America, has passed away aged 90.
Born in Buffalo, New York in 1925, McNeill served in World War II before being captured by the Germans and placed in a prisoner of war camp – an experience that transformed his spirituality.
Returning to the United States, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1948 and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1959.
McNeill fell in love with a man while completing a Ph.D from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 1964 and would later recall of the experience, ‘the joy and peace that comes with that — it was a clear indication to me that homosexual love was in itself a good love and could be a holy love.’
In 1969 he played a part in the establishment of DignityUSA, a support and social group for LGBTI and LGBTI-accepting Catholics to worship together, and founded the group’s New York chapter in 1972 while teaching Christian Sexual Ethics at the Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union Theological Seminary in the city.
In 1976 McNeill published the book The Church and the Homosexual with the permission of his Jesuit order – the first non-judgemental work on gay Catholics and their place in the church – and it was translated into several languages.
However McNeill was ordered by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI, to stop speaking on the subject or risk expulsion from the church after he came out as gay on national television in the United States that same year in an interview with Tom Brokaw on the Today show.
McNeil continued to minister quietly to LGBTI Catholics for many years while keeping a public silence until Ratzinger issued the Vatican pastoral letter ‘On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons’ in 1986 which described gay people as having a ‘tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.’
McNeill spoke out against the document in statements given to the National Catholic Reporter and the New York Times but Ratzinger retaliated by ordering him to give up all ministry to LGBTI people and advocacy on their behalf.
McNeill was expelled from the Jesuits and forbidden from saying Mass – though he technically remained a Catholic priest.
However his expulsion freed him to speak publicly again against homophobia in the Catholic Church and he continued to be an advocate for LGBTI Catholics for many years.
In 1987 McNeill was honored by being made Grand Marshal of the New York City Pride Parade and in 1998 he published a memoir, Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair: My Spiritual Journey.
In the late 80’s he also founded The Upper Room AIDS Ministry as an outreach group for homeless people with HIV in Harlem.
For much of his early career McNeill had publicly said he was celibate but in truth he had been in a same-sex relationship with his long term partner Charlie Chiarelli since 1969 and the pair married in Toronto in 2008.
In 2012 McNeill was the subject of the documentary Taking A Chance On God in which he spoke of having tried ‘with the help of the Holy Spirit to free gay Christians from the lies of a pathologically homophobic religion.’
McNeill passed away with Chiarelli at his bedside at a hospice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 22 September.
In a statement announcing his death, DignityUSA executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke praised McNeill as ‘the first major prophet of the Catholic LGBT movement.’
‘His groundbreaking bravery in daring to question official Church doctrine was truly liberating to so many people. The Church and the Homosexual was really the ‘coming-out’ Bible for LGBT Catholics,’ Duddy-Burke said.
‘We offer our deepest condolences to Charlie and commend him for his faithful companionship and care-giving to John over so many years.’
McNeill’s family has established a Father John J. McNeill Legacy Fund in his memory to preserve his written and spoken legacy and to continue his world empowering LGBTI Catholics around the world.
The post Leading US gay Catholic Father John McNeill has died aged 90 appeared first on Gay Star News.
Andrew Potts
www.gaystarnews.com/article/leading-us-gay-catholic-father-john-mcneill-has-died-aged-90/
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