Members of St. Paul’s Within the Walls in Rome, Italy, carry banners in Italian and English promoting the Rainbow Initiative during the 2024 Roma Pride parade. The Rainbow Initiative supports LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum-seekers. Photo: St. Paul’s Within the Walls/Facebook
[Episcopal News Service] Several congregations in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe will participate in parades and host special worship services throughout June in celebration of Pride Month.
Many of these special events will take place on or close to World Refugee Day, June 20. The participating churches will use their presence to promote Episcopal Migration Ministries’ Rainbow Initiative. They aim to bring attention to the special needs of LGBTQ+ forced migrants and to spread the word that Episcopal churches are a safe space for them.
“It all, for me, keeps going back to our Baptismal Covenant – ‘Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?’ That’s what we’re all trying to do,” Janet Day-Strehlow, chair of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe’s Institute for Christian Studies, told Episcopal News Service. “It’s not what we’re seeing happening in the U.S., nor in places in Europe. It’s getting more and more difficult, and more and more right-leaning, which is not the direction we want to be going.”
Day-Strehlow proposed Resolution D045 – “Supporting the Protection of LGBTQI+ Refugees and Asylum Seekers – which passed at the 80th General Convention in 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland.
That resolution paved the way for the Rainbow Initiative, which launched in 2023. Since then, many dioceses and congregations churchwide have worked toward addressing the needs of LGBTQ+ migrants with their own ministries.
“I think that the way that we are inclusive and loving assures people that they’re being seen – we see them, we recognize them as they are. …We are coming to these initiatives with open and loving hearts,” Erin Lederrey, the first Episcopal chaplain to serve in Switzerland and the first trans woman chaplain to serve in the Swiss Army, told ENS.
Max Niedzwiecki is an anthropologist who serves on The Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on World Mission and who has worked closely with Episcopal Migration Ministries on developing its Rainbow Initiative Program. He told ENS that bringing attention to LGBTQ+ migrants is an extension of being a welcoming, inclusive and respectful church.
“Putting into practice ‘welcome,’ meaning everybody, includes people who don’t speak your language and people who don’t share your gender identity or sexual orientation, and people who don’t have legal status,” Niedzwiecki said. “This is an opportunity to put that [welcome] into practice and to develop spiritually. …This is an opportunity to bring those different ministries together so that they can both become stronger.”
For the Episcopalians who help run these ministries, LGBTQ+ migrants need support more than ever as the United States and some European Union countries enact increasingly aggressive anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
LGBTQ+ migrants face persecution, discrimination and violence in their home countries and often in resettlement countries. Sixty-five countries around the world criminalize private, consensual same-sex relations. Homosexuality is punishable by death in 12 countries, according to data collected by the Human Dignity Trust, a United Kingdom-based charity organization that uses strategic litigation to defend LGBTQ+ rights globally.
In the European Union, which includes 27 member countries, LGBTQ+ individuals have some protections under EU law and treaties. Social protections, same-sex marriages and family rights, however, vary by country. Some EU countries, like Hungary and Slovakia, have attempted to implement anti-LGBTQ+ policies in recent years.
Reported hate crimes and harassment against LGBTQ+ people are increasing across Europe, according to survey data compiled by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies have also been spreading across Europe. This month, the European Union is pursuing a new migration regulation that, if enacted, will increase deportations and allow the creation of detention centers for rejected asylum-seekers who can’t be repatriated. Asylum-seekers are people seeking protection from persecution or violence but haven’t yet been legally recognized as refugees.
Violence against immigrants has increased along with anti-immigrant sentiment. Last week, for example, a knife attack in Northern Ireland set off two nights of riots. Several homes believed to be housing immigrants were targeted.
“No refugee or asylum-seeker is just getting up one day to move to an unfamiliar country and have the time of their life. Like LGBTQ+ communities, especially trans communities, migrant communities feel the brunt of being the scapegoats whenever there’s a conflict somewhere,” Aaron Scott, The Episcopal Church’s gender justice officer and a trans man, told ENS. Scott previously worked for an LGBTQ+ migration rights organization in New York City.
The Episcopal churches in Europe are responding to these growing trends with acts of love, according to Kim Powell, senior warden of the American Cathedral in Paris, France.
“In the context of church, everyone should care because we’re all children of God. We are supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves and see the reflection of God in the person we’re looking at, and ourselves,” Powell told ENS. “If it is about love, then we should be welcoming to everyone and care, because it matters.”
The cathedral is observing World Refugee Day by collecting sneakers and socks for migrant children in Paris. On the morning of Paris’ Pride parade on June 27, the cathedral will host a special Pride Eucharist and gathering. The cathedral will also promote its Rainbow Ministry, which holds weekly LGBTQ+-centered Evening Prayer and Compline services.
Pride Month is a time for LGBTQ+ people to celebrate their identities, share their communities’ contributions to society and raise awareness of issues they face today. For Scott, Pride Month is also a time of solidarity that must include migrants.
“Pride can’t be celebrated without the whole community, so we can’t leave LGBTQ+ migrants behind,” he said.
Scott is working alongside Episcopalians in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe to build a Rainbow Initiative partnerships between ministries in Europe and the United States.
Day-Strehlow encourages Episcopalians living outside Europe to visit the convocation’s member churches to see firsthand how their ministries serve LGBTQ+ and migrant communities.
“The Episcopal Church in Europe, radically welcoming LGBTQ+ people and forced migrants, is countercultural in a lot of places right now in the United States and Europe,” she said.
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.