The Gay Internet’s Favorite Papal Candidate?

Following Pope Francis’ death this week at age 88, Catholics around the world (and LGBTQ+ people affected by the Church’s doctrine) are wondering who will take his place. Among the reported frontrunners is Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a close ally and advisor to Francis who could become the first Filipino Pope in history — and potentially continue in the spirit of Francis’ fraught relationship with LGBTQ+ rights. Indeed, in the somewhat ironic Conclave-inspired social media discourse around the selection of the next pope, Tagle has emerged as a queer favorite.

Born in the Philippines in 1957, Tagle first entered the priesthood in 1982 and became a bishop in 2001. He went on to serve as the Archbishop of Manila from 2011 to 2020, and was elevated to Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 — the seventh Filipino to be named a cardinal in Church history, as Rolling Stone Philippines reported this week. Tagle later became Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in February 2020, and Francis elevated Tagle to Cardinal-Bishop of San Felice da Cantalice a Centocelle in Rome that May, making him the first Filipino clergymember to be granted the Church’s highest (sub-papal) rank. From 2015 to 2022, Tagle was also the president of Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella network of international Catholic aid and development organizations.

Tagle was frequently compared to Francis after the latter became Pope in 2013. Like Francis, Tagle’s humbler tendencies, like riding public transportation, set him apart from other Catholic leaders. Some in the Philippines described Tagle as “unassuming” and “approachable” in remarks to the BBC in 2013, when Tagle was already considered a contender for the papacy.

Tagle also shared with Francis a somewhat sympathetic view of LGBTQ+ people, whom he acknowledged had been mistreated by the Church. “[T]he harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers, et cetera, in the past they were quite severe,” Tagle told a Catholic youth conference in London in 2015. “Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society.” In 2017, Tagle reportedly led a Catholic social media initiative for Easter in the Philippines called the “Lazarus Project,” using the hashtag “#ResurrectLove” to call for LGBTQ+ acceptance in churches. And in 2019, Tagle called on Catholic youth to stop discriminating against or “labeling” LGBTQ+ people, asking them instead to use “your vocation, your talents, and your uniqueness […] for the greater glory of God, not against other people or society.”

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