In the quiet pews of Sacred Heart Church, Sandra Worsham wrestled with her identity as a lesbian and a Catholic. With the support of New Ways Ministry, she transformed her pain into a testament of faith, proving that love and devotion can coexist.
“We’re going to have to be careful about this,” Elizabeth “Teeny” Horne said as she hugged fellow teacher Sandra Worsham in her empty classroom at Baldwin High School in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Worsham was caught off guard. Not because the attraction wasn’t mutual, but because Horne was a devout Catholic. Worsham’s first marriage had crumbled as she confronted her sexuality, but not without guilt and shame as her deep desire for God collided with the reality that she was gay. Her southern religious upbringing taught her that Christianity and homosexuality were incompatible. But here was a woman, Horne, who attended Mass every morning, acknowledging her own feelings for Worsham. The year was 1974, long before being gay was societally accepted, 40 years before gay marriage was legalized by the US Supreme Court.
As Worsham’s friendship with Horne deepened, so did her intrigue with Catholicism. Horne’s unwavering commitment not to act on her feelings of attraction also made Worsham wonder if the Catholic faith could be a similar anchor in her own life. Maybe Catholicism could “fix” her too. One weekend Worsham decided to attend a “Serendipity” workshop in Atlanta, where she met Father Thomas Kenney. It was the first time she had ever been around a priest up close, and she talked to him briefly about her interest in the Catholic Church. After she got back home to Milledgeville, she received two books in the mail from the priest, The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton, and Christ Among Us, by Anthony Wilhelm. In the quiet of her apartment, Worsham devoured these two books, writing copious notes into her journal.
“Everything I read clicked within me,” Worsham reflects. “The sacrifice of the Mass, the real presence of the Eucharist, everything I read just sounded like the truth.” On August 31, 1975, Worsham entered the Catholic Church. “I also became Catholic in an attempt not to be gay,” she adds.
For 30 years Worsham and Horne lived together as roommates, best friends, partners, spouses without that title—committed to each other—but never did they physically act on their feelings. It was love. They attended Saturday vigils and holy days of obligation, and during Lent on Fridays, they prayed the Stations of the Cross after school. Worsham played the organ for Saturday vigil, and they both sang in the choir on Sundays. There were rumors in that small southern town about their relationship, of course, but as Worsham laughs, “I got credit for a lot more fun than I was having.”
They were faithful, both to one another and to their choice to be celibate, for three decades. After a long illness, Horne passed away in 2005. Their relationship, Worsham reflects, was exactly what it was supposed to be. Anything more would have tormented their consciences.
But in the years following Horne’s passing, Worsham began to wrestle more with her sexuality. Could her Catholicism and sexuality coexist? Did she really need to go through the rest of her life hiding this part of herself?
Worsham ’s spiritual journey began again. Soon she would encounter New Ways Ministry.
A Space for LGBTQ Catholics
Francis DeBernardo described himself as the “last triumphalist Catholic” throughout the 1980s. He had been “fiercely proud of Catholicism” as he worked for The Tablet in Brooklyn, as he read the works of Catholic Worker cofounder Dorothy Day, as he studied Catholic social teaching, as he witnessed how the Vatican and United States bishops spoke out about income inequality and against nuclear weapons during the height of the Cold War.
But in 1992, his pride in Catholicism came crashing down when the Vatican released a document instructing US bishops to be extremely cautious about supporting legislation to protect lesbian and gay people’s civil rights—including to the point of opposing such legislation. This was all on the heels of a 1986 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which described homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered.” Doctrine was one thing, but DeBernardo took this new challenge to civil rights as an affront to basic Catholic social teaching. “You’re reading it, and you’re like, ‘Whoever wrote this does not know a gay person,’” says DeBernardo.
But instead of turning his back on Catholicism, Francis decided to get involved. How could he serve gay and lesbian Catholics and let them know that they are deeply loved and accepted by God as an integral part of the body of Christ?
“I had always known about New Ways Ministry,” DeBernardo says. “What I hadn’t realized is that they were just two miles from my house in Maryland.” New Ways has been building bridges between the LGBTQ community and the Catholic Church since 1977.
“From its founding, New Ways Ministry has worked to make known the gifts that LGBTQ people bring to the Church and to society,” says Sister Jeannine Gramick, then a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the organization’s cofounder. DeBernardo began volunteering for New Ways by stuffing envelopes in bulk mail on volunteer nights. In 1996, he became the organization’s executive director, a position he still holds today.
Throughout the 1990s, in response to the Vatican document, DeBernardo began to hear about gay Catholics being thrown out of confessionals or asked to no longer volunteer in their parishes, or even parents of gay sons or daughters being ostracized in their church community. In 1999, the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation ordered New Ways founders, Sister Jeannine and Father Robert Nugent, to cease pastoral work with homosexual persons. In 1984, another Vatican congregation had asked them to separate from New Ways Ministry.
As executive director, DeBernardo remembers attending a Mass for gay Catholics in Philadelphia, where they had to meet in the basement of an Episcopal church—reminiscent of underground gatherings when Christianity was criminalized. “You just got the sense that this was a group of people in exile, you know, in exile from the Church,” he says. “But even though they were in exile, they were fiercely holding on to their Catholic identity, which really impressed me. Those stories of oppression mixed with commitment really helped me, I’d say, to start reading the Gospels differently. I started seeing how much Jesus went to the exiles, to the marginalized.”
Why wouldn’t gay Catholics run as far away as possible from Catholicism after this kind of treatment and stereotyping? DeBernardo says that, in some ways, gay and lesbian people are forced to ask spiritual questions as they wrestle with their identities. New Ways accompanies LGBTQ Catholics on that search, “building bridges of justice and reconciliation,” promoting inclusion while also never turning their back on the Church, which teaches that while homosexual acts are immoral, gay people “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358)
“Most already know the Church’s doctrinal ‘stance,’” DeBernardo says. But LGBTQ Catholics “are showing up at church, maybe feeling rejected socially, maybe longing to integrate who they are with their faith. Sexuality, you know, is about a lot more than who one goes to bed with.”
Case in point is priest and influential spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, whom DeBernardo once had as a professor for a class he audited at Yale Divinity School. Though Nouwen never came out as gay, Nouwen’s biographer Michael Ford explores how Nouwen’s private wrestling with his sexuality perhaps informed how he wrote so profoundly about human identity and the spiritual search for wholeness.
Yes, priests and religious have taken vows of celibacy. But, as DeBernardo points out, that does not mean that sexuality, attraction, and other aspects of human identity simply slip away. In fact, as Nouwen so poignantly detailed in his writings, this wrestling with identity, insecurity, and loneliness can become a springboard into accepting who we already are as God’s beloved.
“We have worked a lot with gay priests and lesbian nuns,” says DeBernardo, who, one week before his interview with St. Anthony Messenger, was heading up a conference for LGBTQ religious. “Sexuality is a lot broader than genital activity. But 99 percent of the time when the Church talks about sexuality, they’re talking about sex.
“Sexuality, however, is about who we fall in love with, who we develop friendships with, what we feel, what gives us our identity, healthily navigating some of the fantasies we encounter, and how we feel accepted or unaccepted by society. Back in the 1970s, there were Salvatorian fathers and brothers—early pioneers in ministering to gay and lesbian Catholics—who released a report that essentially concluded that ministry to gay and lesbian people has to be about more than repeating Church teaching to them.”
DeBernardo says New Ways has a two-pronged approach to gay and lesbian ministry: educate and advocate. This helps Catholics in the LGBTQ community to feel seen and accepted while a space is created for them to use sexuality to inspire personal growth and spiritual discovery.
Integration is personal and looks different for each person. As Worsham discovered, it can shift throughout one’s life. She had seen how beautiful her three-decade partnership with Horne had been and how their love had strengthened their personal lives as well as the lives of their family, friends, and parishioners. Maybe that could exist again. Maybe integrating a part of herself she had labeled as broken would allow love to flow in new ways.
Freedom and Exile
Worsham was gay. At age 63, she was finally ready to accept that part of herself. She had fallen in love with a woman identified only as Letha and no longer wanted to live in secret. “There was a whole me, but I had been refusing half of me,” she reflects. “I understand that term ‘internalized homophobia’ more now, because for a long time I felt that I had something inside that was ugly and needed to be hidden from the world.”
Ready to risk if who she was would be accepted by others, she found herself at a New Ways conference, longing to connect with other gay Catholics and seeking guidance about how to share this important part of herself with others in Milledgeville and at her parish. “I was tired of being sorry for who I am,” she says.
It’s worth noting that Worsham is not some radical progressive, seeking to upend the structures of the Catholic Church. She admits she was “put off” by some of the experiences at the New Ways conference, like a female priest sharing a story about how she consecrated hosts with the wave of her hand. But it was a workshop led by Sister Jeannine Gramick, New Ways cofounder, that changed the course of Worsham’s life.
“You need to go back to Milledgeville and tell somebody,” Sister Jeannine advised. Still five years from the US Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage in 2015, Sister Jeannine counseled Worsham, “The more people who know someone who is gay, the more they’re going to accept gay people.”
When Worsham returned home, she did exactly that. First, with her parish choir. Then, at a gay Christmas party. Then, with a group of lesbian women who gathered at a restaurant in downtown Milledgeville every Tuesday for chicken wings (hence the name of her 2017 memoir, Going to Wings, the fruition of both her journey as a lesbian Catholic and five decades of teaching English literature). Worsham even went on a lesbian cruise. She was out . . . kind of.
When Worsham accidentally sent a woman in her parish choir an invitation to her and Letha’s 2010 Valentine’s Day wedding in Bennington, Vermont, where gay marriage was legal, the choir member expressed having a “moral dilemma” about attending. The choir member, distressed over the wedding invitation, shared it with a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Milledgeville, asking for his guidance about attending the reception. What the priest had long suspected, Worsham says, could no longer be ignored.
The next Tuesday, she was called into the priest’s office and asked to stop playing the organ at the Saturday night vigil after 25 years of faithful service to the parish. Worsham reflects, “That ripped my heart out.” A 2024 book detailing the 150-year history of the church would leave out Worsham’s playing of the organ entirely.
“Can I still go to Communion?” Worsham asked the priest that day.
He told her no.
Thirty-five years before, on August 31, 1975, Worsham had been confirmed Catholic at Sacred Heart with Horne by her side and received her first Communion. Now, in that same place, she was told she could no longer receive the Eucharist because of whom she had chosen to love.
‘Your Life Is a Sermon’
For most gay Catholics, that is where the story ends. Bitterness settles in and understandably so. Many abandon Christianity entirely. Some land in some form of progressive Christian community around like-minded people, but that, too, can lack diversity and become its own ideological echo chamber.
Sacred Heart had stood at the center of Worsham’s spiritual growth and evolution, as well as her three-
decade partnership with Horne. But now her home was a source of trauma and pain as a priest presumed what went on in her bedroom, something he dared not do for heterosexual couples or for single people.
“God is not concerned about gender,” says Sister Jeannine. “God cares only that we love.”
Worsham and Letha tried the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church. “I can tell you where the bathroom is in every church in Milledgeville,” Worsham laughs. Letha turned against Catholicism because of how grieved and hurt the love of her life was. For four years they sought to find a spiritual home.
During this time, Pope Francis was also beginning to chart a more nuanced pastoral approach to LGBTQ Catholics. There was his famous “Who am I to judge?” comment when asked about gay priests in an impromptu 2013 press conference, a nonjudgmental tone that would become a hallmark of his papacy.
Later that year, he was interviewed for a story in America magazine and was quoted saying, “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.” In 2015 Sister Jeannine and 50 New Ways LGBTQ members were given front-row seating at a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square. As the Supreme Court moved toward its ruling on gay marriage and social media amplified polarization, Pope Francis modeled a tone of compassion and nonjudgment.
One day, Worsham sat down next to Letha in their home and began to sob. “I just really miss Catholicism and Sacred Heart,” she choked. Worsham thought Letha would be flabbergasted, but she simply responded, “Then you should go.”
Her first time at Mass in four years, Worsham says she cried through it all. She was home. But still there was a nagging question weighing on her heart: Could she receive Communion?
Worsham wrote to the archbishop of Atlanta, then-Archbishop Wilton Gregory, explaining the situation. No response. She met with the priest at Sacred Heart who fired her from playing the organ. He asked if she had ever considered attending Mass in the nearby parishes of Macon or Greensboro.
“That puzzled me,” Worsham says. “If I’m worthy to receive the Lord in Macon and Greensboro, why would I not be worthy in Milledgeville?”
Finally, Worsham wrote to Sister Jeannine, who told her that she should stay at Sacred Heart, if that’s where she wants to be, and receive Communion. A priest cannot presume someone’s conscience, Sister Jeannine advised, nor are they supposed to make a scene at the altar. It may make the priest uncomfortable, but so was St. Paul when he was knocked off his horse.
“Your life is a sermon,” Sister Jeannine said to Worsham.
It was also around this same time that the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. The day following the ruling was a Saturday, when she would have normally been playing organ at the Saturday night vigil, and she decided to attend Mass. She parked at Sacred Heart next to a pickup truck that had a sign in its window: “The Supreme Court is Not Christian.”
During the homily that night, the priest talked about how the American Church was being persecuted, about how he would never perform a gay wedding, about how imperative it was for Sacred Heart parishioners to stand up for a traditional sexual ethic.
But Worsham was thinking about a different sermon, the one Sister Jeannine had written to her about. “Your life is a sermon,” she had said.
During Communion, Worsham walked to the front. She held out her hands. She looked the priest in the eye. “The body of Christ,” he said.
“I said, ‘Amen.’ And I said it loud.”
Sidebar: A Blessing for All
On December 18, 2023, Cardinal Victor Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, released a declaration previously approved by Pope Francis, Fiducia Supplicans (On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings). This text allows for the blessing of individuals in same-sex civil unions without recognizing them as sacramental marriages.
Such blessings may precede or follow the actual civil union ceremony. Why such blessings? So that “all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit” (31). And, “ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God” (33).
On July 3, 2025 , the original text was reaffirmed by Cardinal Fernández as expressing the teaching of Pope Leo XIV. The full text can be found at Vatican.va/content/romancuria/en.html. —Pat McCloskey, OFM
