Henri was born into a traditional Catholic family. He went to mass, became an altar boy and grew up surrounded by a rigorous religious education.
He didn’t really know what homosexuality was: “It was something we talked about from afar at the playground, a bad word we said without knowing what it was.” when he was a teenager, his parents took him to the Manif pour tous, and it was at that moment that Henri began to understand that he liked boys.
Henri tries to talk about it by confiding in men of the Church: “They told me: don’t worry, it will pass, forget it, it’s no use.” He moved to London, where he continued to attend church and share groups. It was there, through a lesbian couple, that he discovered that it was possible to be homosexual and Catholic: “They saved me from a lot of things, from a path that would have been far from God, it really calmed me down in many aspects. »
Two not incompatible identities
Henri decides to return to France. He “came out” to those close to him, first his friends, who received him well, then to his family: “It was a real shock, they didn’t know what to say, how to say things. »
Henri decides to embrace his two identities: gay and Catholic. He joined the DUEC association (Becoming One in Christ), an association which organizes “LGBT friendly” masses and meetings. With this association, he went to the Pope’s Jubilee in 2025, where the gay community was welcomed for the first time: “What I felt in Rome was a very strong, very moving moment. »
Today, Henri hopes to be received like any other Christian within the Church: “She walks like the pilgrims to Emmaus, and I walk with her,” he confides.
Through his testimony, Henri wishes to show that you can be homosexual and Catholic, that these two identities are not incompatible, but can on the contrary nourish and enrich each other: “We can believe in God, we can believe in love, and we can be gay and Catholic. »
