The Vatican is sending new signals about how it intends to minister to LGBTQ+ Catholics in the Pope Leo XIV era. There are signs of openness and limitations. LGBTQ+ Catholic advocates cheered this week when a Vatican working group released a report featuring the testimony of two gay, married Catholics who spoke of their sexuality and faith. Additionally, Leo made clear during a recent airborne news conference that he believed the church’s teachings on social justice, equality and freedom were far more important than its teaching on sexual morality. At that same news conference, though, Leo also made clear he will go no further than Francis on the contentious matter of same-sex blessings.
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FILE - Members of the LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)
FILE - A representative of Dignity USA, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics, wears pins on the lanyard of his pilgrim credential, outside the Sao Vicente de Paulo Parish Social Center after Pope Francis visited the center in the Serafina neighbourhood of Lisbon, Aug. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)
FILE - Members of the LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)
A couple from Utah face parental kidnapping charges after being accused of taking a 10-year-old child to Cuba amid a complicated custody fight involving the child’s gender identity. Court document show someone from the child's family raised concerns the child had been taken to Havana for gender-affirming surgery. It’s not clear if the defendants, who include the child’s biological father, actually planned on surgery for the child. The return of children kidnapped by a parent and taken overseas often is settled through negotiations or legal petitions. In the Utah case, federal officials worked with Cuba to deport the defendants and sent a government aircraft to retrieve the child.
The Trump administration has taken the unusual step of sending a government plane to Cuba to return a 10-year-old at the center of a complicated and contentious custody fight involving the child’s gender identity. The child’s parent, Rose Inessa-Ethington, a transgender woman, is accused of taking the child to Cuba without permission. Utah police sought the child's return after concerns arose about possible gender-affirming surgery. Inessa-Ethington and her partner were arrested and charged with international parental kidnapping. The child has been returned to the biological mother. The case highlights ongoing debates over gender-affirming care for minors in the U.S.
Nearly 4,400 fewer U.S. teens and young adults died by suicide than projected in the first two-and-a-half years of the 988 mental health crisi…
Xaneri Merino, a transgender woman and artisan from southern Mexico, was once punished for weaving in her Indigenous community, where men are largely barred from weaving. Today, she uses the backstrap loom to explore identity and resilience while teaching others to turn weaving into a form of personal expression and LGBTQ+ resistance. Merino was expected to tend cattle or work in the fields. Yet her grandmother defied those rigid gender norms, passing on to her the ancestral practice of the backstrap loom — an ancient, portable device operated using a strap secured around the weaver’s waist.
Muxe artist Xaneri Merino gives a backstrap loom workshop for LGBTQ+ people in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Muxe artist Xaneri Merino gives a backstrap loom workshop for LGBTQ+ people in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)