Father Martin meets the Pope: a scandal, but not a surprise

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 03, 2025

Many faithful Catholics were surprised and dismayed to learn that Pope Leo had met with Father James Martin, SJ, in a private audience last week. I share their dismay. But not their surprise.

We all knew, from the moment he was elected, that Pope Leo XIV would not repudiate the policies of his predecessor. He had worked closely with Pope Francis, who appointed him as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. By all accounts their relationship was friendly, with not a hint of conflict. While some of us might have wished for a new Pontiff who would immediately announce a series of policy changes, that was never in the cards. The conclave would not have chosen a cardinal likely to make abrupt reversals.

However, from the earliest days of his pontificate, Pope Leo has shown a keen interest in healing divisions, easing tensions that had accumulated during the reign of Pope Francis. He has sent reassuring signals to the critics of the late Pontiff, as well as to his supporters. Although he has made no dramatic policy changes, his statements—from his weekly public audiences to his beautiful addresses to French lawmakers and to his fellow Augustinians—have shown a deeply Catholic sensibility that encourages the tradition-minded, while his supportive remarks about “synodality” and his pleas for the environment have satisfied the progressives.

Evidently, in these early days, Pope Leo wants to be—as the Sovereign Pontiff should be—a focus of unity, a force for stability in the Church. So he is listening, avoiding peremptory judgments, seeking the mainstream of Catholic thought.

Now think for a minute about the people to whom the Pope is listening, and about what constitutes the mainstream of Catholic thought today. Sadly, both would recommend that the Pope meet with, and listen to advice from, Father Martin!

Both in the United States and in the Vatican, the quest that Father Martin represents—the drive to make homosexuals feel comfortable in the Church—enjoys solid support, especially among the hierarchy. Very few bishops would dare to challenge the Jesuit propagandist; many enthusiastically support his work. Check the endorsements on his books. Notice how many diocesan assemblies appear on his busy list of speaking engagements. His pleas for an open attitude toward the LGBTQ agenda are treated with great respect at Catholic universities and episcopal assemblies.

We don’t know exactly how Father Martin’s private audience with the Pontiff was arranged. But it is easy to imagine that if he sought the audience, dozens of influential prelates would have supported his request, and few if any would have recommended against it.

How can we explain the popularity of this priest, whose support for gay ideology puts him in clear conflict with the teachings of the Church? Father Martin cleverly dances around the line that separates compassion for homosexual people with acceptance of homosexual acts. But his support for “gay” Catholics—that is, those who identify themselves in terms of a sexual disorder—is problematical in itself.

But can we go a step further, and question the artifice that pretends “gay” Catholics are celibate? After all the scandals of the past few decades, isn’t there abundant evidence that a vigorous homosexual lobby is at work within the Church? Moreover, that lobby is strengthened by the acquiescence of many clerics who, while not themselves homosexual, are unwilling to oppose the activists. In one of his most important essays, the late Father Paul Mankowski, SJ, described these latter clerics as “tames,” and argued persuasively that the “tames are more effective agents of the gay agenda than gays themselves.”

Actually the life of Father Mankowski (which ended, abruptly, five years ago today) and his brave lonely battle against homosexual ideology, sheds an interesting light on the question of Father Martin’s audience with the Pope. In 2017, Father Mankowski reviewed Father Martin’s book, Building a Bridge, for First Things. The review was civil, scholarly, and devastating. In Chicago, where Father Mankowski was stationed at the time, Cardinal Blase Cupich was so enraged by that negative review that he called the local Jesuit provincial, threatening to take disciplinary action.

Consider the contrast between the treatment of these two Jesuit priests. Father Martin was lionized by Catholic institutions for his work supporting the gay agenda; Father Mankowski was silenced for defending Church teaching.

As for Cardinal Cupich, he remains a very influential figure at the Vatican. It’s possible that he recommended the meeting between the Pope and Father Martin. But then the same could be said about a dozen or more cardinals who can be reliably accounted among Martin’s supporters.

In any case Father Martin did meet the Pontiff, and emerged from that meeting saying that Pope Leo “wanted to continue with the same approach that Pope Francis had advanced” regarding LGBTQ issues. Of course this was Father Martin’s “spin” on the meeting. We don’t know what, if anything, the Pope said to justify that report. But since the Vatican issued no statement, the Martin “spin” was the only story the world heard. Which was entirely foreseeable, since Father Martin is a master of spinning the facts to suit his rhetorical purposes.

Because the consequences were so predictable, it is indeed a scandal that Father Martin had an audience with the Pope. But here’s the greater scandal: It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.