Sometimes a person enters a Christian community and finds a home. At other times, they find doors, procedures, cautious words and people who are not quite sure where to place them. They are not necessarily turned away. More simply, they are sent elsewhere. Or asked to wait. Almost as though they were being told to go back to sleep.
The online meeting with Fr Marco Torre, taking place on Sunday 28 June 2026 as part of the Called by Name journey, will begin from this distance between a Church that administers and a Church that recognises its own children.
The title of the meeting is “From a Bureaucratic Church to a Family Where We Can Feel at Home.” One question will accompany the prayer and dialogue: “Can a mother forget the child she has carried?”
The image is simple, almost elementary. A child does not belong to a mother because they have filled in the right form or because they meet her expectations. They belong to her story, her flesh, her life. In the same way, the Church is not first of all a place where people must prove that they deserve to enter, but a family in which each person should be able to discover that they are known, awaited and called by name.
The prayer will begin with the biblical story of the young Samuel. During the night, Samuel hears a voice and runs to the priest Eli, convinced that Eli has called him. Twice, Eli sends him back to sleep. Only the third time does he understand that the voice may be God’s call, and he teaches the young man how to listen.
Even today, many people arrive at the doors of our communities carrying questions, wounds, desires and a faith searching for words. A listening Church does not decide in their place what they are allowed to hear. It does not send them back to sleep or ask them to hide. It walks beside them, so that they may recognise the voice of God within their own lives.
Fr Marco Torre is a priest of the Diocese of Chiavari and coordinator of the “Amore in cammino” team within the Diocesan Family Pastoral Service, which accompanies LGBT+ people and their families. During the evening, he will offer a spiritual reflection, followed by an account of the experience of the Church in Chiavari, a personal testimony and an open space for dialogue.
This will not be a conference or a debate about LGBT+ people. It will be a moment of prayer, listening and encounter, a time to pause together before the Word and ask what kind of Church we are building.
The meeting is free and will take place online, with Italian-English interpretation. Registration is required in order to receive the access link.
Register for the meeting with Fr Marco Torre
The project and upcoming meetings are presented at www.chiamatipernome.org.
Because no one should have to knock at the door of the Church wondering whether it is truly their home.