Bookmakers have identified two front-runners who are likely to become the next pope, following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday (21 April), and one is 67-year-old Filipino prelate Luis Antonio Tagle. But is he pro-LGBTQ+?
The other front-runner is 70-year-old Cardinal Pietro Parolin, from Veneto. Bookmakers are offering 11/4 odds on Parolin becoming pope, which equates to a 26.7 per cent chance. However Luis Antonio Tagle is close behind with 7/2 odds: a 22.2 per cent chance of securing the papacy.
Pope Francis was seen as a moderate, progressive leader, and made a number of statements and gestures aimed at pushing the church to be more welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community during his papacy.
He also urged parents to love their LGBTQ+ kids, not disown them, and told parents of queer youth that God loves all his children just as they are. However, he was still bound by the strict teachings of the Catholic church, and repeatedly spoke out against marriage equality, and so-called “gender ideology.”
More positively, Pope Francis said being gay is “not a crime” before describing the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people as “wrong”, he echoed these views when denouncing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, saying “discrimination is a sin, and violence against the LGBTIQ communities is unacceptable”.
So, where does his possible successor, Luis Antonio Tagle, stand on these issues? Is Tagle a left-wing/progressive figure, or does he belong to one of the more conservative factions of the Catholic church? Let’s find out.
Is Luis Antonio Tagle left or right wing?
The good news for fans of Pope Francis is that Tagle is set to follow in his footsteps. The Telegraph notes that Tagle has been dubbed “‘the Asian Francis’ for his good humour and progressive views.”
He’s considered to be humble, modest, and a man of the people. According to The Guardian, he has criticised the “harsh” stance toward single mothers, also as bishop of Imus he rode jeepneys (cheap public minivans) and invited the destitute to eat with him.
However, Tagle has been criticised for being too slow to condemn former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called war on drugs, which saw as many as 30,000 people killed in public crackdowns after Duterte took office in June 2016. Some young men were gunned down in the streets.
Tagle is also fervently anti-abortion, and, in fact, has equated abortion to Duterte’s drug killings.
The College of Cardinals note that “Tagle often uses the pulpit to respond to issues of social justice, but his positions on moral matters appear somewhat incoherent. On the one hand, he railed against a Filipino ‘Reproductive Health’ bill, albeit less strongly than some of his fellow bishops, that introduced anti-family and anti-life policies, and he has spoken strongly against abortion and euthanasia.
“On the other hand, he holds some situations exist where universal moral principles do not apply, as in the case of Communion for couples who live together conjugally but without sacramental marriage,” the entry continues.
What has Luis Antonio Tagle said about LGBTQ+ rights?
Like Pope Francis, Luis Antonio Tagle supports a compassionate approach to marginalized groups such as migrants and refugees, though it’s important to note he also supports the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception.
However, he does seem to have a relatively sympathetic view of LGBTQ+ people. “[T]he harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers, et cetera, in the past they were quite severe,” Tagle told a Catholic youth conference in London in 2015, according to Them.
“Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society,” he continued.
Also, in 2017, he led a social media initiative in the Philippines called the Lazarus Project, to call for LGBTQ+ acceptance in churches.
Them also note that in 2019, Tagle called on Catholic youth to stop discriminating against or “labeling” LGBTQ+ people, asking them instead to use “your vocation, your talents, and your uniqueness […] for the greater glory of God, not against other people or society.”
If he does become the next pope, Luis Antonio Tagle will be be thrust into a world where culture wars targeting the LGBTQ+ community have taken a strong hold, so having a Catholic leader who has a relatively compassionate view of queer people, as Tagle seems to do, could help mitigate these attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.
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