OREANDA-NEWS In an unprecedented action of collective cuming out, 125 representatives of the Catholic Church in Germany publicly announced their affiliation to the Queer community, demanding changes in church labor law, dpa reported early on Monday, January 24. They also called on other Catholics to join the OutInChurch initiative.

As specified in the message, among those who have revealed their affiliation to LGBTQ+ there are priests, reference pastors and leaders of Catholic communities, teachers and teachers of religious schools, employees and employees of the church administration.

According to the demands of those who took part in the action, the Catholic Church should stop using sexual orientation and gender identification as a reason for dismissal, in addition, defamatory statements regarding gender and sexuality should be excluded from church teaching.

According to the priest Bernd Monkebuscher, who initiated a blessing for homosexual couples in 2021, the coming out action in the church environment was inspired by the example of last year, when 185 German actresses and actors told that they were gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-queer, intersex and non-binary people.

In March 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican recognized the «presence of positive elements» in same-sex relationships, but stressed that such partnerships, nevertheless, cannot on full grounds «become the object of church blessing».

In October 2020, the head of the Catholic Diocese of Dresden-Meissen, Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers, called for a change in the attitude of the Catholic Church in Germany to homosexual believers and same-sex marriages.