The Catholic Church has published a document in which they recognise that “LGBT Youth” want to “benefit for greater closeness” with the Church.

This marks a significant change in the Church’s use of language in regards to recognising LGBTQ people. In the past they have used terms like  “persons with homosexual tendencies”, and more recently “homosexuals”.

The Instrumentum Laboris  is a document of the Synod on the theme of “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment”. The Church has chosen to highlight the youth for its upcoming Synod following Pope Francis’ decision to place Catholic youth at the forefront, and will convene in Rome later this year.

The document was made of three parts- recognizing, interpreting and choosing with regard to vocation in life, and explored topics like homosexuality and the role of women. The Church’s teaching on taboo topics like abortion, homosexuality, marriage, contraception and cohabitation are up for debate,  following input input from an online questionnaire to which over 100,00 youth responded.

There was also input from the International Seminar on the Condition of Youth held in Rome in September 2017, and the Pre-Sydnol Meeting in March with 300 youth, and another 15,000 who participated online.

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary general of the Vatican’s synod office, has said at a press conference that the term was included because it had been used by young people and the church was following suit.

“We are open. We don’t want to be closed in on ourselves,” he said.

“The Synod’s primary aim is to make the whole Church aware of her important and not at all optional task of accompanying every young person, without exclusion, towards the joy of love,” said the Cardinal.

This follows the recent news that Pope Francis expressed opposing views regarding the validity of families at the Vatican in the weeks leading up to the upcoming World Meeting of Families. “It is painful to say this today: People speak of various kinds of family… [but] the family of man and woman in the image of God is the only one.” said the religious leader.