Last Updated on October 31, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry

It’s time to welcome the queer saints. Many believe that saints and other souls will visit for Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). The LGBTQ saints are important because people are searching for alternative ways to lead loving lives.

LGBTQ saints show us not only THEIR place in history, but also OUR place — because we are all potential saints who are meant to embody love.  We can tap into the energy of our ancestors in faith. We can absorb different ways of being when we see how the LGBTQ saints interacted with the world and with God. By showing us what is possible, they can inspire us to find our voice and be our best. By learning about their human struggles, we engage in a process of wisdom and discernment. They can protect us from harm, such as psychological damage inflicted by anti-LGBTQ attacks in God’s name. They shed light on our resilience and open new channels in our hearts and minds.  For some, the queer saints become friends and helpers, working miracles large and small, some as simple yet profound as a reminding us that “you are not alone.”

LGBTQ people have always existed, in every time, place and culture.  We are part of God’s fabulous plan. Our history is our power. Remembering it and passing it on is a sacred responsibility that shapes the future. Telling the truth about the past creates justice now. The history of our queer saints is precious and hard to find, so I am sharing as much as I know, even though it remains work in progress. Churches have tried to control people by burying queer history, so we have to search extra hard for small clues — and make a big deal out of what we find — to compensate for past bias.  We need to see as many images of LGBTQ holiness as possible, to counteract all the hate and erasure. They can inspire us to trust our divine intuition, even when it leads to unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unconventional places.  I feel called to help everybody have access to LGBTQ saints. It has been said that if you think of a saint, that means there was already a connection and that saint approached you first.  We as LGBTQ people need to see our own sacred worth, and other Christians need to see us as part of the church too.

Most lived before the idea of LGBTQ evolved and many details of their lives are unknown, so they are saints **of special interest** to the LGBTQ community, while not necessarily being LGBTQ themselves.  It is not necessary to twist history to create LGBTQ saints in order to connect with God or participate in the church.  Those are human rights.  Sometimes I may go too far in labeling historical figures as LGBTQ saints, but I would rather err on the side of affirming LGBTQ people as a way to counteract all the hate and discrimination that was done over the centuries in the name of the God.

Saints tend to be the folk heroes of various groups, cultures, occupations, and nations. For example, there are African saints, Irish saints, women saints — and now LGBTQ saints. As Vatican advisor and Jesuit priest James Martin notoriously told faithful Catholics in 2017, “A certain percentage of humanity is gay, and so were most likely some of the saints. You may be surprised when you get to heaven to be greeted by LGBT men and women.”

At first I thought that LGBTQ saints were rare. Gradually as I researched them over the years, I came to see that they are everywhere throughout all time and they are among us now. We have all met saints in our lives. They are ordinary people who are also extraordinary.

I offer reflections on what I have learned by writing more than 130 profiles of saints in the LGBTQ Saints Series since 2009.  It has been a collective effort as readers informed and inspired me with their suggestions.  I aim to live up to these words about me from James Weiss, Episcopal priest and associate professor of church history at Boston College: “You yourself are an historian of the very best kind, using historical scholarship to provide those on the margin with a heritage they never knew they had — and also correcting and critiquing all the misrepresentations.”

One of the greatest challenges has been to figure out who is a “saint” and who is “LGBTQ.” It is hard to draw the line for who to include. If the boundaries of sainthood are nebulous, then the definition LGBTQ is even more fluid. This article is my queer theology of sainthood.

Who are the LGBTQ saints?

Many people are eager to know the names and histories of LGBTQ and queer saints. They include same-sex pairs, gender-nonconforming saints, mystics who had holy homoerotic visions of God, and more.  My list also incorporates modern LGBTQ religious leaders and martyrs.  For specifics about this rainbow tribe, visit the LGBTQ saints page, check out the calendar of LGBTQ saints, and join my LGBTQ Saints Facebook group. These individuals represent the contributions of vast numbers of LGBTQ people all over the world.

Prints of “Saints Sergius and Bacchus” by Robert Lentz are available through Amazon and Trinity Stores. Photo by Scott Sella.

LGBTQ saints can be broadly organized into two overlapping categories: religious figures whose queer side has been hidden, and LGBTQ people whose spiritual side has been downplayed.  The mission of finding LGBTQ saints becomes a matter of either queering the saints or sainting the queers.

Historically most mainstream churches refused to canonize any saints who were openly LGBTQ, so we must claim and reframe our own saints. It’s important to re-evaluate familiar figures as well as to recover those who have been lost and to recognize the saints of our own time. The church may seem to have the power to decide who is a saint, but each individual can also choose for themselves. Everyone has the responsibility — and the joy — of discovering the saints in their own way in their own time.  The apostle Paul urges us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).  Church actions against queer people have caused many in the LGBTQ community to take an anti-religious stance.  Uncovering the spiritual or religious side of secular LGBTQ icons can be just as hard as finding the queer side of saints on the official church roster.

Approach authorized saints with care.  Traditional stories of the saints tend to be overly pious, presenting idealized super-heroes who may seem distant, irrelevant or even hostile. Sometimes saints have been used to get people to passively accept oppressive situations. Queer Quaker scholar Mitch Gould summed up the dilemma well when he wittily warned me, “Sainthood is a devilishly nuanced accusation.” Too often the saints have been put on a pedestal to prop up institutional power while glorifying virginity and masochistic suffering. The emphasis on miracles may disrespect nature, the ongoing miracle of life.

Church leaders have sometimes used saints to impose control from the top down, but the desire for saints springs naturally from the grassroots. People are drawn to the presence of spiritual power in the lives of the saints, and their willingness to use that power for others, even at great cost to themselves. Saints attract others with the quality of their love, even though their personal lives may not be “saintly.”

Feminists have criticized saints as tools of the dominant morality, but with LGBTQ saints the opposite can be true: They can shake up the status quo. We can regenerate the complex reality of saints whose lives are being hijacked by hagiographies and hierarchy to enforce the established power structures. Queer saints can help reclaim the wholeness, connecting sexuality and spirituality for the good of all.

LGBTQ saints inspire and protect

Naming someone a “queer saint” may seem like a contradiction in terms to some, but it is a liberating act in two ways: The most obvious one is that revealing the hidden queer sexual orientation or gender identity of traditional saints can liberate people from sex-negative, oppressive church dogmas. Secondly revealing the unseen “saintliness” of seemingly secular LGBTQ people can liberate people from the tyranny that says sexuality must be separate from spirituality. Phrases like “queer saint” become a handy shorthand — neatly challenging the assumption that sainthood and LGBTQ identity are mutually exclusive.  All saints are queer in the sense that they are counter-cultural, presenting an alternative to compulsory heteronormativity, worldly power, and business as usual.

“Saint Sebastian” by Tony O’Connell

Without the LGBTQ saints, bad things can happen. The queer saints can serve as be a specific antidote to the poisonous theology that drives LGBTQ people to despair and suicide. Religious faith is a source of strength for most of the population, but it’s a hazard for LGBTQ people, according to a 2018 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. It found that LGBTQ people were more likely to consider and actually commit suicide if they were religious. Even those who leave the church usually wrestle with its after-effects.

The healing value of the LGBTQ saints can be seen in the work of gay artist Tony O’Connell.  He portrays a variety of queer saints, especially the martyrdom of Sebastian. “I have been aware for some years that a defining part of my life is the aftershock of having felt rejected by the Catholic Church and the scars that still leaves in me. (Hence the language of my art work),” O’Connell told Q Spirit. He sees himself as one of many LGBTQ people who experience Religious Trauma Syndrome, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The LGBTQ community has a deep hunger for saints that share their experiences.  They express their longing in many ways, including the short prayers written as comments when I post my articles about queer saints on social media.  The prayers were so eloquent and moving that I created an ever-expanding Litany of Queer Saints.

Some readers object that I use the term “saint” too broadly in my LGBTQ Saints series, but most end up agreeing with the the critic who conceded, “If calling someone a saint enables us to emphasize the courage, insight, and importance of his contribution, then yes, I’ll call him a saint!”

What is a saint?

Dictionaries define a saint as “a holy person” or “an extremely virtuous person.”  People have been conditioned to esteem saints as idealized figures, but they were real human beings with internal conflicts and personalities forged in the fires of grief and discrimination.  The fact that they have flaws mixed with their virtues is part of their appeal. Canonizing actual, factual people who combine the sacred and profane affirms the wholeness of life itself. To be an angel implies perfection, but saints push the limits of their humanity.  As Emmy-nominated gay singer Tituss Burgess said in an interview, “Saints are just sinners who fell down and got back up.”

LGBTQ saints struggled like people today to reconcile sex and spirit, and different saints found different answers.  My definition of who qualifies as an “LGBTQ saint” continues to expand. First I included saints officially canonized by the church, but I soon discovered that many have achieved “sainthood” by popular acclaim. They were the people’s choice.  Sometimes we “canonize” our own beloved LGBTQ saints by popular acclaim, apart from any church hierarchy.  This is similar to how sainthood worked in the early church, before the era of popes.  The church didn’t even have a formal canonization process for its first thousand years. I also found that the church has overlooked or actively erased many worthy queer Christians of the past. Hiding our history is another form of oppression.

Saints are often used by the institutional church to promote their own agenda. But there are plenty of saints who stood up against the church hierarchy during their lifetimes. Like today’s LGBTQ Christians, the saints sometimes faced opposition from within the church. Some LGBTQ martyrs, including cross-dresser Joan of Arc, were killed BY the church, not FOR the church! Black gay civil-rights leader Bayard Rustin wrote, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” The church needs its saintly troublemakers too.

Ultimately all believers, living and dead, can be called “saints,” a practice that began in the early church. In the New Testament, Paul used the word “saint” to refer to every member of the Christian community. The terminology continues to be used by church leaders such as Troy Perry, founder of the LGBTQ-affirming Metropolitan Community Churches. I have many fond memories of working with him at MCC headquarters, and one of them involves saints.  Whenever Troy wrote a letter to MCC members, he addressed it as “Dear Saints.” And we always got back some responses protesting, “I’m not a saint!” But in a very real sense, we are all saints.  LGBTQ people can overcome negative religious conditioning and grow spiritually when we stop waiting for official church recognition and name ourselves as saints.

I rather like the concept of sainthood that emerged in comments on my blog during a discussion of the post “Artist shows sensuous gay saints.” New Mexico artist Trudie Barreras wrote: “My definition of saint has absolutely nothing to do with what the hierarchical church defines, and everything to do with the quality of love displayed.” Or, as gay author Toby Johnson commented, “Being a saint means creating more love in the world.”

Can LGBTQ martyrs be called saints?

Joan of Arc by Robert Lentz TrinityStores.com

Sainthood comes in many different forms. Some become saints by leading an exemplary life, but the surest path to sainthood is to risk or lose one’s life for the good of others. As Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13). Martyrs, from the Greek word for “to bear witness,” are a common type of saint.

Among modern LGBTQ saints, the one who is most likely to be recognized someday by the Roman Catholic church is a martyr: Mychal Judge.  He was a gay man who served as chaplain to New York City firefighters.  Judge was killed in the line of duty during the 9/11 terrorist attack.  A movement to canonize him is underway.  This effort got a boost in 2017 when Pope Francis added a new path for sainthood in the Catholic church:  dying in service to others, even if it was not a religious martyrdom.

Sometimes readers object that my LGBTQ saints series includes modern martyrs whose lives were not “saintly.” My understanding is that martyrs need not be role models, but they are honored simply because they were killed for a particular cause. Therefore I include people such as Matthew Shepard because they were killed for being queer and their deaths became a catalyst for LGBTQ rights, regardless of their personal flaws. A helpful term comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. They use the phrase “passion bearer” to honor a person who faces death in a Christ-like manner, even if they were not killed for their faith.

Anyone who is murdered for being LGBTQ can also be considered a martyr because the attack was triggered by their courage to live their socially unacceptable queer lives.  They became targets because they expressed their sexual orientation or gender identity, even if only partially or with some qualms.  LGBTQ martyrs are witnesses to the truth of how God created them, and thereby they reveal God. Traditional religious martyrs are killed due to odium fidei (hatred of their Christian faith), but Robert Shine of New Ways Ministries points out that LGBTQ martyrs are victims of odium amoris, or “hatred of love.” Whether or not they died as martyrs, the lives of the saints were indeed difficult. Our lives are difficult too — and that can become a point of connection.  The presence of martyrs who were killed unjustly may make some people uncomfortable, but it’s important to listen to the voices of the martyrs and join them in the work of righting wrongs.

Did all LGBTQ saints accept their queer identity?

There is debate about whether closeted, self-shaming people should be considered queer saints. The apostle Paul of Tarsus is a good example of this dilemma: He is a famous saint whose words have been misused to condemn homosexuality, but some Bible interpreters believe that he personally struggled against his own homosexual desires. Can people like Paul and Augustine be “queer saints” if they publicly condemned homosexual activity while being queer themselves in orientation if not in action? I include them in my LGBTQ Saints series, over some objections. Some refuse to count them as saints because they did so much damage by perpetuating church-sponsored homophobia and sexism, but others identify strongly with these conflicted saints.

This is also an issue for 20th-century saints who lived through great changes in society’s attitudes toward LGBTQ people.  Christian clergy such as Henri Nouwen and Pauli Murray wrestled with church teachings on homosexuality and never reached the point of full self-acceptance or queer activism. It may be a sign of progress that some people now dismiss their struggles as unnecessary. But I don’t want to negate the integrity that such saints brought to their faith challenges.  The struggle to reconcile sexuality and spirituality is a significant part of the LGBTQ spiritual vocation, and many saints of all sexualities have sublimated their sexual energies into cultural, artistical, intellectual and spiritual pursuits to benefit society. They weren’t just torturing themselves, but rather were tortured by oppressive church teachings that were imposed upon them until they internalized them.

What is an LGBTQ saint?

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer did not exist as categories throughout most of the history in which the saints lived. Their presence on the LGBTQ Saint list means that they are of special interest to LGBTQ people, but it’s often impossible to confirm the actual sexual orientation or gender identity of historical figures. The term “queer” is increasingly used to describe gender-variant or homo-social people of the past, so I often use the phrase “queer saints” and “LGBTQ saints” interchangeably.

I try to be historically accurate and yet accessible while compensating for the way queer history was buried in the past.  Critics make a valid point when they say that it’s anachronistic to call historical figures “LGBTQ” because the concept didn’t exist back then. This is where I boldly go where some careful scholars fear to tread.  Elaborate scholarly and historical terms such as “same-sex desire,” “romantic friendship,” “homophile,” “homosocial,” “homoaffectionate,” “Uranians” and “inverts” are unfamiliar to the general public and can become gatekeepers that prevent ordinary people from getting access to the life-saving info that God loves LGBTQ people.

Harvey Milk by Robert Lentz TrinityStores.com

Some deny the existence of historical lesbian, gay and bisexual saints because it’s almost impossible to prove their sexual activity. Likewise is it difficult to decide whether historical figures fit into the contemporary category of transgender. I try to explain these controversies carefully in my profiles of LGBTQ saints.  Same-sex love does not have to be sexually consummated for someone to be honored as an LGBTQ saint. Deep love between two people of the same sex is enough. It’s about sexual orientation, not sexual activity. LGBTQ people today are inspired by the courage of paired historical saints who maintained a committed same-sex relationship even though homosexuality was outlawed.  Some LGBTQ saints are more queer-revered than queer, meaning that they are beloved in the queer community without much evidence of being queer.  Saint Sebastian is an example.

Homosexuality is more than sexual conduct. The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as “an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions.” The dominant Christian culture tried to suppress overt homosexuality, so any hint of homosexuality that survives in the historical record should be given extra significance. Many official saints were nuns or monks living in same-gender convents or monasteries.  Naturally their primary emotional attachments were to people of the same gender. The more I look, the more LGBTQ saints I find.  Soon almost all saints seem LGBTQ!

I want to emphasize that people can and do have deep same-sex friendships without an erotic component.  In expanding the boundaries of what it means to be a saint, I don’t want to narrow the definition of friendship.  I do claim same-sex paired saints as inspiration for the LGBTQ community, but I acknowledge that they may not have been queer themselves.  The same applies to saints who inspire the transgender community by breaking gender norms, but may not have been transgender in the contemporary sense.

Naturally various characteristics intersect in each individual, so every LGBTQ saint also has other identities based on their race, gender, nationality, occupation and other qualities and experiences.  I focus on the often under-reported queerness of saints, but in that process I seek to value the whole self of each saint by incorporating other facets that are integral to their being.

Through faith and imagination, we are reunited with those who have gone before. All the saints who ever lived are still right here, and when we tune into them, we are in good company.  Our queer ancestors were organizing long before the Stonewall Uprising sparked the modern LGBTQ movement.  Let us be inspired by the LGBTQ saints who surround us as a “great cloud of witnesses” and commit ourselves to our own queer paths toward sainthood.

Queer saints canonized by and for the LGBTQ community

Each community needs at least a few of its own saints, people who “look like me,” either literally or figuratively. Some of the LGBTQ saints are like local saints because their veneration rose from the grassroots in a specific community. They can be considered “folk saints” or “saints by popular acclamation.”

In Catholic tradition there are local saints who are honored by a specific community and universal saints who are canonized by the official church for widespread veneration. Local saints may not meet the standards for official canonization, but their role in inspiring their own community is crucial. Even after death they continue as active members of the LGBTQ community.

Marsha P. Johnson icon by Kelly Latimore

It’s challenging to find the right balance between history and hagiography when the LGBTQ community is so hungry for positive role models. Regardless of the historical facts, the “myths” about our saints get at archetypal truths. A good example are the “saints of Stonewall.” The LGBTQ community needed individuals to symbolize that decisive moment. Witnesses disagree about which individual triggered the uprising, but all three of the the most commonly named possibilities have denied throwing the first punch or brick at the rebellion. All are queer people of color: biracial lesbian Stormé DeLarverie and two self-professed “drag queens”: African American Marsha P. Johnson and Latina Sylvia Rivera.  Each of them has been called the Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ community. Whatever else they did or failed to do with the rest of their lives, these three have come to symbolize the moment when the LGBTQ community stopped accepting abuse and claimed the right to exist. Artists are creating many icons of Marsha P. Johnson in particular. They arise not only from Johnson’s contributions, but also from the desire for a black transwoman saint.

We in the LGBTQ community are doing citizen hagiography — crowd-sourcing the biographies of LGBTQ saints.  We are building hagiographies, a fancy word for the (usually idealized) biographies of holy people.  Citizen scientists do research and citizen historians document the past.  We can be called citizen hagiographers, community hagiographers or folk hagiographers.  I am grateful for those who join me on this sacred journey.

Why and how I write about LGBTQ saints

Perpetua and Felicity by Robert Lentz Amazon or TrinityStores.com

My spiritual journey began with being raised in a mostly secular family, so I did not grow up with saints.  Still I have an inexplicable affinity for the folk devotion to saints as expressed from the grassroots by ordinary people. I began writing about LGBTQ saints in 2009 after finishing a series of books on the queer Christ (Jesus in Love novels, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, and Lambda Literary Award nominee Art That Dares). Many people told me that they couldn’t relate to a gay Jesus, but they liked the idea that LGBTQ people were among his followers, so I began to write about them.  My LGBTQ Saints series quickly became the most popular content on my blog.  It grew into the LGBTQ Saints series and calendar.  I launched the LGBTQ Saints group on Facebook on All Saints Day 2019, and more than 1,500 members joined in its first year. I have become a “saint whisperer,” a person who has developed an ability to communicate with saints, as a “horse whisperer” uses non-verbal cues to understand and work with horses.

I learned in seminary in the 1980s about new artwork and research on LGBTQ saints, so I was shocked to discover twenty years later that it was not easily available online. Largely due to the church’s ambivalence or even antagonism toward LGBTQ spirituality, much of it was buried under obscure code names like “images that challenge” — if it was available on the Internet at all.  I became a citizen historian who applies journalistic skills to the past instead of reporting on current events.

As an independent blogger, I am free to put LGBTQ saints out there where more people can find and benefit from them. I decided to uncover and highlight holy heroes and role models to inspire LGBTQ people of faith and our allies. The positive response confirmed that people are yearning to connect with queer people of faith who have gone before.  The queer saints fascinated me more and more as I dug into them. Kevin Elphick, a scholar of queer Franciscan saints, pointed out to me that the process is mutual: “And their stories in turn ‘dig into’ us and indwell there, so that our LGBT ancestors inhabit our lives with their holiness, precedent, and shared heritage.”

People ask how I pick the saints for my LGBTQ Saints series.  I’m always on the lookout for queer saints!  I’m guided by the Holy Spirit and my own curiosity as I surf the Web.  Sometimes it feels as if a particular saint reaches out to me, insisting that their story must be told.  Frequently friends alert me.  In many cases, I let artists lead me.  A beautiful icon or portrait of a saint often catches my eye and inspires me to do their profile. I make a conscious effort to present a diverse group of both familiar and unfamiliar saints from many times and places, cultures and races. I continue to reflect on questions of who to include on the LGBTQ saints calendar.  Is one queer incident in the life of a famous saint enough to qualify them for the LGBTQ saints calendar?  Do self-hating queers belong?  The institutional church only canonizes saints after their death, and I stick to that formula in my LGBTQ Saints series.  Christian art has a beautiful tradition of using a square halo to identify a living person destined for sainthood.

Working on each profile is like welcoming that saint as a houseguest.  Saints can feel distant, stiff and on-dimensional, so I try to imagine who among my friends might be most similar to a particular saint. They never completely leave, and I sense that I am surrounded by the saints. The Bible describes them as “a great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). Researching saints can be like following clues on a uncharted trail to find a buried treasure.  Another blessing is getting to know the people devoted to each saint.  Some saints seem to have special advocates who urge me to write about them and supply a wealth of background material.  Each year on their feast days the saints guide me to touch base with their particular devotees.

“The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs” by Fra Angelico, 1428-30, Wikimedia Commons

A work in progress

Over the years I accumulated an ever-growing to-do list to keep track of all the possible LGBTQ saints that came to my attention through research or suggestions from readers. When it grew to more than 150 names, I began to feel like I was sitting on a gold mine because I couldn’t keep up with researching and writing about all the possible queer saints.  Finally I realized that I should stop hanging onto all these names.  People need queer saints now.  So I put them all on the Q Spirit calendar page.

Originally I planned to write complete profiles of each saint before adding them to the Q Spirit website. I still aim to do profiles of every LGBTQ saint, but I hope that others will follow the shorthand clues on the calendar and do their own research. Studying and sharing the LGBTQ Saints series has taught me that different saints speak to particular people at specific times in their faith journeys.  I am sure that there are saints on my to-do list who are waiting eagerly to connect with the specific readers who feel drawn to them.

As a special service to readers, my calendar lists every queer saint that I could find, no matter how obscure, if they were officially canonized in any church tradition.  Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Anglican, Orthodox, Coptic and other saints are all on the calendar.  Most saints are listed on the date of their death (and entry into eternal life), in keeping with church tradition.

Celebrating All Saints, All Souls and Day of the Dead

All Saints Day (Nov. 1) used to be called All Hallows Day, and the preceding evening was the Eve of All Hallows, now celebrated as Halloween. In Catholic and Protestant Christianity, the Feast of All Saints commemorates all saints, known and unknown. The following day pays respect to others who have died. It is known as the Feast of All Souls or the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.  Prayers are offered to ask the saints to help the living, and to offer help to the souls of deceased loved ones.

“Gay Wedding Tuxedo Skeletons for Day of the Dead” by Mister Reusch. His Etsy shop has signed art prints. Skeleton Brides are available too.

All Souls Day is celebrated in Latin America as the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). The holiday is especially popular in Mexico, where the happy celebration is one of the biggest events of the year. Skeletons are an important symbol for Dia de los Muertos, representing rebirth into the next life.  There are even decorations of same-sex skeleton couples to mark the holiday in an LGBTQ way.  These holidays are also associated with the Celtic Festival of the Dead (Samhain). They grow out of the pagan belief that the souls of the dead return to visit at this time of year.

Religion and society have often dishonored and desecrated queer lives. May all saints and all souls be restored to wholeness and holiness as we remember them.

LGBTQ All Saints Day prayers

Q Spirit’s Litany of Queer Saints begins:

God, thank you for the lives of the LGBTQ saints and martyrs of rainbow light! May they inspire us to live with courage and loving hearts….

Click to read the whole Litany of Queer Saints.

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Kittredge Cherry

Founder at Q Spirit

Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author who writes regularly about LGBTQ spirituality.She holds degrees in religion, journalism and art history.She was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served as its national ecumenical officer, advocating for LGBTQ rights at the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches.

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