Gay media celebrates Pope Leo XIV’s sinful promotion of 4 pro-LGBTQ bishop

'Letters from Leo' hailed Pope Leo’s recent LGBTQ-friendly appointments, which include a bishop who had a drag queen speak at Mass. A gay news site published an article praising Pope Leo XIV for having “made room for progressive LGBTQ+ voices.” 

Headlined Pope Leo’s Recent LGBTQ-Friendly Appointments Include Bishop Who Had Drag Queen Speak at Mass, the article draws heavily from a liberal Catholic Substack, Letters from Leo, authored by former Obama staffer Christopher Hale.

The article focuses on the installation of four reportedly pro-homosexual and pro-transgender bishops: James Checchio, appointed by Leo in February to head the Archdiocese of New Orleans; Bishop Ramón Bejarano, chosen in December to lead the Diocese of Monterrey, California; Bishop Christian Würtz, selected in by Leo in July 2025 as the new bishop of Eichstätt in Germany; and Baker, Oregon diocese’s Bishop Thomas Hennen, who at age 47 became the youngest bishop to head a diocese. 

Perhaps the most alarming of the four is Bishop Bejarano. The former San Diego auxiliary bishop famously celebrated an “All are Welcome” LGBT-themed “Pride” Mass — during which a drag queen activist was permitted to speak – as the new bishop of Monterey, California.

Bejarano was the celebrant of a Sunday Mass organized by St. John’s “LGBTQ Ministry” and had the full backing of the Diocese of San Diego under Bishop Michael Pham, one of Pope Leo XIV’s first episcopal appointments.

“I apologize for the pain and distress that I and the Church have caused to many of you,” Bishop Bejarano reportedly said in a 2024 “All are Welcome Mass” sermon at the same parish. “I apologize for the stigmatization and trauma we have caused to others because we have told them that they are not valued and that they are not worthy of the love of God. There are many others out there who feel rejected and unvalued.”

Drag queen “Nicole” Murray-Ramirez, a former board member of the powerful LGBTQ+ lobbying behemoth Human Rights Campaign, thanked Bishop Bejarano for his work “standing up” for the “LGBTQ community.”

Murray-Ramirez wrote extensively in a Facebook post about what an honor it was to speak during the Mass and praised Bejarano.

“The bishop’s sermon was a most powerful one that focused on (the fact) that God loves ALL of us the way we are,” Murray-Ramirez wrote. 

Based on Murray-Ramirez’s account, it appears that Bejarano omitted any mention of the Church’s teaching on same-sex “marriage.”

“I had the Honor to be asked to speak and it was so wonderful to see and hear the well-deserved thunderous prolong ovation that Bishop Bajarano received when I sincerely thanked him on behalf of all of us for standing up for not only the LGBTQ COMMUNITY but the undocumented and refugees,” Murray-Ramirez continued.

Photos posted by Murray-Ramirez from the Mass on Facebook show the “drag queen” posing for a photo and being blessed by Bejarano. The pro-LGBT Mass was also attended by San Diego’s openly homosexual, nominally Catholic Mayor Todd Gloria, who posed for a picture with the bishop.

Bishop Würtz, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews, has endorsed homosexual “blessings” and has contradicted Church teaching by asserting that that sodomy it “not sinful.”

Würtz, 55, was among the 38 German bishops in 2023 who voted in favor of a document endorsing “blessings” for homosexual “couples” as well as for the divorced and “remarried.” Six months earlier, Würtz supported the German Synodal Way’s heterodox “Doctrinal Reassessment of Homosexuality” document that falsely called homosexual acts “not sinful” and “not intrinsically evil.”

Bishop Checchio, 60, has allegedly covered up the abuse of the late disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick and has expressed support for Father James Martin and a dissident pro-LGBT ministry.

In 2016, Checchio was appointed as bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen by Pope Francis. McCarrick, the founding bishop of the diocese, was notably front and center at Checchio’s episcopal consecration.

As bishop, Checchio would have been responsible for reviewing the diocese’s past sexual abuse settlements, which included two settlements the Metuchen and Newark dioceses paid between 2005 and 2007 to priests allegedly abused by McCarrick totaling $180,000. However, Checchio and Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin never disclosed this settlement information.

In 2018, he invited the heterodox Jesuit priest Fr. Martin to speak in the diocese and even extended an invitation to his private residence before the talk.

Checchio has also allowed the dissident pro-LGBT ministry “In God’s image” at the Church of the Sacred Heart in South Plainfield.

“‘In God’s Image’ is the parish faith sharing group for Catholic gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning persons 18 and over and their families,” the ministry’s webpage, which features rainbow imagery, states.

While the ministry claims to accept the Church’s teaching on same-sex “marriage,” a layman named David Harvie, who is “married” to another man, previously served as the group’s facilitator.

Bishop Hennen helped draft pastoral guidelines for “sexual and gender minorities” in the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa. 

While he affirmed in 2019 that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” as the Catholic Church teaches, he was later part of the Diocese of Davenport’s committee that drafted “Guidelines for Pastoral Accompaniment of Sexual and Gender Minorities” that do not make any mention of the fact that same sex-attracted persons are called to live chastely.

Instead, it cites “principles for pastoral accompaniment of sexual and gender minorities” that include:

(1) “a fundamental respect for the dignity of every human person, body and soul, created in the image and likeness of God;

(2) a basic acknowledgement of people who experience differences in sexual orientation or gender discordance; 

(3) a commitment to loving people first and listening for deeper understanding; 

(4) a commitment to involving others in the discernment process, especially the individuals and families involved as well as other professionals and collaborators; 

(5) a case-by-case approach with a basic willingness to make reasonable and appropriate accommodations when possible.”

Because the guidelines failed to clearly call same sex-attracted persons to chastity, Bishop Joseph Strickland remarked on X that “in substance it echoes the rhetorical strategies of gender ideology, undermining Catholic clarity and weakening the call to chastity.”

Strickland went so far as to call this “doctrinal smokescreen” a “hallmark of the Lavender Mafia – a clandestine network within the Church hierarchy that protects and advances a homosexual ideology while masquerading under the banner of compassion.”

“With the appointment of Fr. Thomas Hennen, bishop-elect, as bishop of Baker, Oregon, we face a troubling reality: instead of correcting the trajectory set by Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV is doubling down on it – deepening the ambiguity that has plagued the Church,” Strickland said.