The Questions the Providence Diocese Would Not Answer

The Diocese of Providence is in the midst of a series of “Listening Sessions for LGBTQ+ individuals, families, and friends” at four parishes across Rhode Island. According to the diocesan website, Bishop Bruce Lewandowski is presiding at each gathering.

The sessions combine Mass, small group discussion, and a community meal, but the diocesan announcement offered little explanation of what participants would actually be called to do or how the sessions relate to the Church’s moral teaching.

The Lepanto Institute wrote directly to Bishop Lewandowski to seek clarification.

The Announcement

On June 9, 2026, the diocesan communications office sent every pastor in Rhode Island a memo describing a series of Listening Sessions for LGBTQ+ individuals, families, and friends, to be shared “at your discretion with those who you think may benefit.”

The terminology itself is doing quiet work. “LGBTQ+” is not vocabulary the Church employs in its own understanding of the human person; it is vocabulary imported wholesale from secular identity politics, now stamped with a diocesan letterhead and a quote from Pope Francis: the Church is “Todos, Todos, Todos,” everyone, everyone, everyone.

The sessions are being held at four parishes: St. Raymond’s in Providence, Christ the King in Kingston, Holy Trinity in Woonsocket, and St. Mary of the Bay in Warren. Each gathering pairs Mass with small-group sharing and a community dinner.

The announcement left two important questions unanswered: Why had the diocese adopted terminology the Church itself does not use? And beyond the language, what exactly would participants be invited to?

The Question

The institute asked the bishop for two main points of clarification:

“First, the terminology used in the announcement, specifically LGBTQ+, introduces categories of identity that the Church does not itself employ in its understanding of the human person. Adopting this language for a diocesan-sponsored gathering, whatever the pastoral intent, risks affirming in practice what is not affirmed in doctrine.

Second, we would like clarity on the structure of the gatherings themselves. Will confession be made available before the Mass celebrated at these events? Will attendees be invited to repentance and conversion in accordance with the Church’s moral teaching, or are the gatherings built solely around listening, without that call?”

A Diocese With Practice in Answering This

Providence has faced a version of this question before, and its bishops have handled it very differently depending on who was in the chair.

In 1985, Bishop Louis Gelineau opposed a Providence ordinance protecting gay residents from discrimination, warning that supporting it could be read as endorsing what he called a sinful lifestyle. By 1995, his position had narrowed to something far more procedural: if the goal was correcting unjust discrimination not otherwise addressed by law, he said, the law should change. Bishop Robert Mulvee left no public record on the question at all.

Then Bishop Thomas Tobin drew the only real firestorm of the five. In June 2019, he tweeted that Catholics should not attend Pride Month events, calling them contrary to Catholic faith and morals, drawing over 65,000 responses and a public call from Rhode Island Pride’s president for his resignation to be seriously considered. Two days later he walked it back, regretting that his comments had proven “so controversial… and offensive to some,” while explicitly declining to withdraw the underlying teaching, writing that his obligation as bishop was to teach the faith “clearly and compassionately.” Whatever else is said about Tobin, he answered the question. He said what he believed, absorbed the consequences, and did not hide behind vague pastoral language to avoid saying it.

Bishop Richard Henning, who briefly succeeded Tobin before being transferred to Boston, largely stayed out of politics. Upon the announcement of Bishop Lewandowski’s appointment, he described Tobin as habitually “outspoken” on abortion and marriage. Bishop Lewandowski, now in his second year, has gone further still: no adversarial statements, only affirmative gestures and, as it turns out, no direct answer even when one is formally requested in writing.

Lewandowski is a Redemptorist, a member of the congregation founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori, a Doctor of the Church and its greatest moral theologian, a saint whose work was devoted to steering a middle course between doctrinal laxity and rigorism, never simply avoiding the question. He shares his order with Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark (no relation to Bishop Thomas Tobin), who personally welcomed an LGBT pilgrimage to his own cathedral in 2017.

The Answer That Wasn’t

The Lepanto Institute received a reply, not from Bishop Lewandowski but from Michael F. Kieloch, Director of Communications & Public Relations. It read, in full:

As the diocesan bishop, Bishop Lewandowski has the pastoral responsibility to know and understand the spiritual needs of all the souls entrusted to his care. Throughout the last 14 months as the new Bishop of Providence, Bishop Lewandowski has been reaching out to meet with and responding to requests to meet with many different groups of people across Rhode Island on how the Church can better meet their spiritual needs and accompany them to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church. These listening sessions are just one part of his wider efforts to better know the people of this diocese.

Read it again against the two questions it was answering. Confession was not mentioned. Repentance was not mentioned. Conversion was not mentioned. Church teaching was not mentioned. What was offered instead was the word “pastoral,” repeated in substance three times without once being defined. A direct doctrinal question received a general mission statement.

Nothing further was offered.