POPE LEO WELCOMES MARRIED GAY COUPLE AT VATICAN, JOKES ABOUT WORDLE
Pope Leo XIV held a private Vatican audience with a married gay couple in October 2025, according to a report published by "Letters from Leo," a newsletter covering the first American pope.
The two men, Alex Capecelatro, CEO of tech company Josh.ai, and his husband Brian D. Stevens, a Catholic philanthropist, were part of a delegation led by Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles. When Pope Leo learned "we are married," Capecelatro later said on social media, the pope received them with "unmistakable warmth and kindness, not a hint of hesitation."
According to the report, Pope Leo and Capecelatro discovered they both needed six tries to solve that day's Wordle puzzle, with the word being "GLARE." The pope "cheerfully came back to compare notes about it minutes later," according to Capecelatro's account.
Capecelatro stated that Pope Leo "radiates compassion and acceptance," and genuinely cares about bringing people together. The delegation presented Leo with a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey on behalf of their archdiocese.
Stevens, who is Catholic, married Capecelatro in May 2023. Capecelatro, who came out in 2015, is not Catholic by upbringing. According to the report, for Stevens, being received at the Vatican as a married gay man "was once unimaginable for a Catholic man of Brian's generation."
The meeting was not officially announced by the Vatican, unlike Pope Leo's September 2025 audience with Father James Martin, a prominent Jesuit advocate for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church. That meeting, which lasted about half an hour, was officially announced by the Vatican in what observers called a sign that Leo wanted it made public.
Father Martin told the Associated Press after his meeting with Pope Leo that the pope told him he intended to continue Pope Francis' policy of LGBTQ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to keep up his advocacy. "I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people," Martin stated.
However, in his first meeting with the Vatican diplomatic corps in May 2025, ahead of his formal installation as pope, Pope Leo affirmed that the family is founded on the "stable union between a man and a woman." The Vatican released Leo's prepared text from that private audience.
Pope Francis never changed church doctrine defining marriage as a union between man and woman and homosexual acts as "intrinsically disordered."
THE CRUSADER'S OPINION
The Pope of Rome met with a married gay couple.
Received them with "warmth and kindness."
Called it building bridges.
Two thousand years of Christian teaching on marriage.
Overturned by small talk about word games.
Pope Leo says marriage is between a man and a woman in official statements.
Pope Francis started this.
Pope Leo continues it.
The question isn't whether doctrine will change.
The question is how long before they stop pretending it hasn't.
TAKE ACTION
1. Voice of the Family: Support traditional Catholic marriage teaching at www.voiceofthefamily.com.
2. Contact your bishop: Demand clarity on whether the Catholic Church still holds that homosexual acts are sinful. Ask if welcoming means affirming.
3. The Lepanto Institute: Fund research exposing compromises in Catholic teaching at www.lepantoin.org or email info@lepantoin.org.
4. LifeSiteNews: Support Catholic journalism that reports without sugarcoating at www.lifesitenews.com/donate.
5. Share this story: Post with #PopeLeo #CatholicTruth and ask whether pastoral care requires abandoning truth about marriage and sexuality.
