"She joins other high-profile LGBTQ Americans whose faith has been reawakened by the Church’s newfound tone of inclusion. ...

Now Rachel Maddow, a married gay woman who once felt alienated, says she too feels the Church has room for her. This is an astonishing shift. It’s hard to imagine such stories even a few years ago, when many LGBTQ Catholics felt they had no place under the Vatican’s roof."

#RachelMaddow #PopeLeo #Catholic #LGBTQ #immigrants
/4

"The timing was so perfect, she quipped, it was 'like it was just grown in a lab to radicalize American Catholics' against cruelty to immigrants.

In Maddow’s view, it’s divine intervention that after Francis’s death the cardinals chose a pope so outspoken on these issues.

Maddow’s public return to Catholicism is part of a larger trend in Pope Leo’s America."

#RachelMaddow #PopeLeo #Catholic #LGBTQ #immigrants
/3

"Maddow praised both Pope Francis and Pope Leo, framing the moment as almost providential.

The Church had 'just said goodbye to Pope Francis and his message of not just empathy but solidarity with immigrants the world over,' Maddow noted, and then along came Pope Leo — a Chicago-born successor who shares Francis’s passion for migrant justice."

#RachelMaddow #PopeLeo #Catholic #LGBTQ #immigrants
/2

"Last night in Chicago, MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow — one of America’s most prominent progressive voices — revealed to a live audience that, after years away, she has returned to the Catholic Church.

It was an remarkable admission from a public figure who is openly gay and often seen as a secular icon."

~ Christopher Hale

#RachelMaddow #PopeLeo #Catholic #LGBTQ #immigrants
/1

thelettersfromleo.com/p/rachel…

Rachel Maddow, Openly Gay MSNBC Anchor, Returns to the Catholic Church

After years away, Maddow says she considers herself Catholic again. She believes Pope Leo can both “soften hearts and sharpen minds” during his pontificate.

^{Christopher Hale (Letters from Leo — the American Pope & US Politics)}

"Documents in the bankruptcy indicate the church had been counting on the law being struck down to drastically limit – if not altogether eliminate – its liability in the vast majority of abuse claims."

#CatholicChurch #Catholic #SexualAbuse #coverup #NewOrleans
/3

"In 2021, Louisiana’s state legislature removed that prohibition and temporarily allowed the pursuit of those claims in civil court no matter how many years earlier the abuse had occurred. The state’s supreme court upheld the law as constitutional in June 2024, though allies of the archdiocese had tried to get it struck down."

#CatholicChurch #Catholic #SexualAbuse #coverup #NewOrleans
/2

"Roughly 600 survivors of the clergy molestation scandal that drove the New Orleans Catholic archdiocese into bankruptcy have secured the opportunity to collectively be paid $305m after attorneys for the victims and the church’s largest insurer struck a deal Monday, according to some of the lawyers."

~ Ramon Antonio Vargas and David Hammer

#CatholicChurch #Catholic #SexualAbuse #coverup #NewOrleans
/1

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/d…

New Orleans Catholic clergy abuse survivors in line to collectively be paid $305m

Attorneys for the victims struck deal with the church’s largest insurer to increase $230m settlement approved earlier

^{Ramon Antonio Vargas (The Guardian)}