Fr. James Martin S.J. Notes Improvement In Seminary Selection Process

Former gay priest finds new life in hospice care

Lawn Griffiths, Tribune
As a gay priest, Leonard Walker could no longer endure the Roman Catholic Church's growing hostility to homosexuality. But he wanted to leave quietly, "without notice and certainly without scandal."

In his final year at Queen of Peace Parish in Mesa, Walker commonly told his brother priests and friends, "I literally felt like a Jew wearing a Nazi uniform." Walker left the parish in November 2005, after 31 years as a priest. He objected strongly to a new Vatican policy to vigorously screen out gay men from getting into Catholic seminaries.

But his leaving was anything but quiet. His action generated wide news coverage, even in the international media.Now living in Kingman where he shares a home with a partner, the 59-year-old Walker recently reflected on his departure from the church and his life now. "It became impossible for me to any longer wear the 'uniform' of an institution that I had loved enough to leave home at 14," he said, and then devote 11 years of seminary and more than three decades as a priest in the Society of Divine Savior, or Salvatorians order. Walker found a job as a hospice chaplain in Mohave County and is assigned to about 20 hospice patients. On most days, he sees two or three, but "on tough days, it's up to five," he said. He regularly journeys to such small towns as Meadview, Chloride and Dolan Springs. "I have no regrets," he said. "I discovered my integrity, and that is worth everything. Being able to go into (hospice) ministry made all the difference in the world." I did not resign the priesthood as some protest or some political stunt to get the church to recognize me as a gay individual," he said. But his church "increasingly and aggressively became anti-gay," he said. The Diocese of Phoenix has not communicated with Walker since his resignation, said spokesman Jim Dwyer. Much of that is because he is a religious order priest, under authority of its own superior general, and otherwise "employed" by a diocese by what are called faculties granted by a bishop. Walker said the church has reversed itself from the 1997 U.S. Catholic Conference's pastoral message, "Always Your Children," which contains such statements as "homosexual persons who are living chaste lives should have opportunities to lead and serve the community" and "homosexual orientation cannot be considered sinful, for morality presumes the freedom to choose."

A close observer of the church, Jim Martin, associate editor of America magazine, a Jesuit national Catholic weekly, said the Vatican implemented its tougher rules in 2005. While he had no numbers about enrollment impacts, he said "people who are in vocation work have told me that people pulled out of the application process after that came out." How rigidly seminaries follow the screening rules varies, he said. One provision is that men who have homosexual tendencies must have been free of such feelings for at least three years before applying to seminaries. "Underreported is that it has prevented gay men who feel they can live celibate from even applying to seminaries and religious orders," Martin said. "So in a sense, it is a self-selection process." The policy was "dispiriting" for some priests, already suffering low morale from the American sexual abuse crisis, he said. Especially affected, Martin said, were celibate gay priests who "learn from the Vatican that your kind is no longer welcome, even though you have been working hard for the church and living chastely for a few decades."

For Leonard Walker, the policy maligned extraordinary priests and led "gay youth and struggling adults" to suffer depression, self-hate and suicidal thoughts. The priest said the grief he underwent from the abrupt departure from parish work could have been far more severe had he not found acceptance in the hospice field.

"I have been so well received to my surprise and shock," he said. He serves as a "nondenominational minister," and he makes it clear that he is not with the Catholic Church. "I live with my partner - he is retired, finally," Walker said. "He retired early at 55 and moved up here from Tucson, and now we are together. So, it is a very open, welcoming community, and I was surprised. Nobody would have expected that." A native of Chicago and ordained in 1974, Walker said, "I didn't come out to myself (as gay) until I was 30, and that was a real struggle because I was a very devoted son of the church."

Today, Walker says he feels "spiritually more whole, spiritually more centered" by serving a wide community where many find themselves alienated from "whatever church they have been in." "I have to trust God far more than I ever did as a priest where there was such security and insulation," he said.

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