Editor’s note: Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the archbishop emeritus of Tegucigalpa (Honduras), wrote a foreword to the new book by the Spanish priest Father Cristóbal Rodríguez, Amados, creados y soñados prodigiosamente: En búsqueda de una pastoral LGBT inclusiva (Loved, Created and Dreamed Prodigiously: In Search of an Inclusive LGBT Ministry), published in June 2025 by Grupo San Pablo España. The original foreword was published in Spanish and was translated for Outreach by Leilani Fuentes. (Leer en español.)
Synodal spirituality has opened new paths for us to advance in announcing and living the Kingdom of God. The Gospel of St. Mark reminds us that Jesus saw the difficulties the disciples had in navigating against the current, and so he walked on waters not simply to perform a miracle of “spectacle,” but to make them see his closeness to them even in their difficulties and problems.
A theme that is opening up little by little and not without difficulties, is that of ministry with members of the LGBT community. They cannot be ignored or looked away from.
The practical implications, not only in the field of family pastoral care but also in many other areas, of the reflection developed in the Synod on Families and crystalized in the document “Amoris Laetitia,” are undeniable. The fruit of that reflection is the publication we have in our hands. Taking the three calls-to action from Chapter VIII, accompany-discern-integrate, the author puts them in dialogue with the reality of the frontiers (fronteras), such as the pastoral care of LGBT people.
It is not a superficial approach. The Ignatian spirituality proposes the framework from which to approach this reality, so that enlightened by the Gospel through the exercise of discernment and accompaniment, we can offer channels of integration that lead to greater communion among all the baptized. The attention to the personal journey of each believer, in their effort to search for God’s will, in an itinerary of personal transformation, is part of the proposal developed in these pages.
The presentation of concrete examples of articulation of distinct pastoral experiences in this field confirms the intuitions of “Amoris Laetitia”: it is necessary to provide inculturated responses in their own contexts of action, without claiming general solutions from above.
To put Creator and creature in contact, the basic experience of Ignatian spirituality, is the only way to activate true processes of change in every believer at an individual level, but also in the entire community. The personal experience, despite it being a part of whoever experiences it, in the context of a believer has a community component that makes it influence and transform the entire ecclessial community.
Hopefully days will come when the specific groups for marginalized people and collectives that today we call frontiers do not exist. And may this be because the ecclessial community has acquired sufficient evangelical maturity to make the church a home for all, where all are recognized, where all find their mission and service.
