Italy’s Catholic Scouts Rule That Sexual Orientation Cannot Bar LGBT Leaders
After Three Years of Internal Debate, AGESCI Rules That Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Cannot Be Grounds for Exclusion From Educational RolesItaly’s largest Catholic scout association has taken a step that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. AGESCI, the Associazione Guide e Scout Cattolici Italiani, has approved a document establishing that sexual orientation and gender identity cannot constitute grounds for exclusion from educational roles within the organisation. The decision, approved by the association’s general council this week, marks the most significant shift in the 50-year history of one of Italy’s most influential youth organisations.”AGESCI has reached the conviction that within the profile of the Christian educational leader, affective orientation and gender identity cannot constitute a criterion of exclusion in the discernment that community leaders are called to exercise when an adult asks to join the association in an educational role,” the document states.
Three Years in the Making
The decision came after three years of internal debate within the scout community and decades during which LGBT people could participate in AGESCI activities but were barred from taking on educational leadership roles. The process involved collecting testimony from across the organisation’s territorial communities.
That testimony revealed a deeply uneven picture. Alongside experiences of inclusion, in which community leaders had valued diversity and created open and transparent environments, the process also surfaced stories of suffering, silence and forced departures caused by prejudice, a lack of tools, and language that failed to respect people’s dignity. It was this accumulated evidence of harm, gathered systematically from within the organisation’s own membership, that built the internal consensus for change.
The document frames its conclusion within what it calls a “pedagogy of welcome, rooted in the daily reality of our educational service,” describing it as essential to promote paths aimed at overcoming homophobic feelings and attitudes.
The Context: Catholic Italy Moving
The timing of the decision is significant. The change is described as having been made possible in part by the progressive recognition of LGBT people within the broader Catholic world, including partial openings from the Vatican under Pope Francis and now Pope Leo XIV, as well as by the courage of those within AGESCI who chose to speak and share their own stories, often of suffering.
AGESCI is not a fringe organisation. It has approximately 180,000 members across Italy and is one of the primary vehicles through which Catholic values are transmitted to young Italians in an educational context outside the school system. A policy change of this kind carries weight well beyond the association itself.
The Reaction
The response from Italy’s Catholic conservative world was swift and predictable. Pro Vita & Famiglia spokesman Jacopo Coghe attacked the decision, asking: “Do parents know? Do families know that they think they are sending their children to a formative and Catholic organisation, but that organisation is then approving documents and projects on gender identity?” He accused AGESCI of betraying families’ trust.
The association has not responded to the criticism directly, allowing the document to speak for itself. The document does not abandon Catholic identity or doctrine. It draws a distinction between the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics and the question of whether a person’s orientation or identity should disqualify them from contributing to the education of young people. That distinction is one that a growing number of Catholic institutions across Europe are making, and which AGESCI has now formalised in writing.
For the LGBT Catholics and allies who pushed for this change from within the organisation, often at personal cost over many years, today’s announcement is the end of a long road. For the young people who will grow up in AGESCI groups led by leaders who were previously excluded, it will simply be the world as it is.
