GNRC Board 2019 – 2021
The GNRC Board now operates under its newly implemented constitution. The two Co-Chairs, Secretary, Region Representative, Diversity Representative and Media Co-Ordinator were elected by its members at the Mexico Assembly in September 2022. The Treasurer position was later co-opted on October 2022 by the current Board.
You may find the previous Boards here:
Board Composition
Ruby Almeida
Co-chair
Gender Diversity
Media Co-ordinator
Hails from India and has lived in England as a Non Resident Indian since the late 1960s.
She has worked in media for over thirty years. She set up a training and production company as a co-operative for Asian women in London, England.
She worked as a Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University, London.
Then worked as a free lance trainer and educator in England as well as in India.
Ruby previously served on the GNRC Steering Committee in October 2015 and became Co-Chair of the GNRC Board from 2017 till 2022.
She served as Chair of Quest, England from 2012 to 2019
Ruby is now Convenor for Quest London South East.
She is current Chair of LGBT+ Catholics Westminster, London England
And is Chair of Bridge and Embrace, an apostolate for LGBT& Catholics in India.
More information and sources about Ruby Almeida
LGBTIQ Religious Archives: Ruby Almeida Profile
Biography Date: March 2023
Dumisani Dube
Africa
Dumisani Dube is the Board member representing Africa and Treasurer of the GNRC Board. A Zimbabwean living in South Africa, he is the founder and Director of Dialogues for Change, a non-profit organization that seeks to facilitate dialogue between religious leaders and sexual minorities. As a Christian and a human rights activist, Dumisani has been passionately involved in LGBTI activism for more than twenty years. He began working for an LGBTI organization in Zimbabwe in 1998, and has a wide range of experience in campaigning for LGBTI rights in different settings, both religious and secular.
Dumisani is actively involved in issues of HIV/AIDS within the LGBTI and MSM (men who have sex with men) sectors. Currently he is involved in training NGOs and religious sectors on the protection of Sexual Minority Refugees and the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Although the South African constitution has officially decriminalized same-sex relationships, many members of the LGBTI community continue to suffer from acts of violence, including rape, sexual abuse, and blackmail. Dumisani is also a communications and advocacy consultant, working to improve media coverage of LGBTI issues, which can be very negative and destructive in both Zimbabwe and South Africa.
In addition, Dumisani leads the Holy Trinity Catholic Church LGBTI ministry at the parish he attends in Johannesburg. He spoke about this experience in an interview he gave in 2019 for the Grant Me Justice project of the GNRC.
*Men who have sex with men.
** Sexual Gender Based Violence
Dumisani Dube on action:
“I am gay and I am Catholic. I am sure I was born gay. I always knew there was something different about me. I am very lucky that I always was in parishes which are very progressive. In our parish in Johannesburg there is an LGBTI ministry, which I lead. At first, it was difficult as a leader because my telephone number was published in a leaflet in the church. Some people called me and accused me of promoting satanism and abomination in the church. I tried to see it as a proof of perseverance and patience. I tried to think: ‘Forgive them, Lord, because they don’t know what they are doing.’ ”
“After we started to engage in dialogue, some people have come to understand, have come to accept the LGBTI community. Some people have even recommended our group to others, some even to their own children, because they have seen how we are and how we work.” (Dumisani contribution in the Grant me Justice campaign)
More information and sources about Dumisani Dube
LGBTQ Religious Archives Network: Dumisani Dube Profile
To get more info and images of Dumisani Dube work, click on the following link.
Biography Date: November 2020
Ana de Carvalho
Europe
Ana de Carvalho represents the Europe Region on the GNRC Board and serves on the Board’s Finance Committee. She has been a Catholic since birth but was confirmed only as a young adult. After that, she became engaged in various Catholic volunteer projects, a prayer community, and a reflection group. In 2016, she founded a Catholic LGBTQI prayer group and from then on became more involved with the LGBTQI Catholic community.
Ana participated in the Second Assembly of the GNRC in Munich in 2017, has participated in the European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups since 2018, and is a member of the Roman Catholic working group of the European Forum. She is also a member of CaDiv (a founding member of GNRC from Portugal) and the online journal 7Margens, which focuses on the margins of religion. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Ana is married to her companion of twenty years, has a twelve-year-old adopted son, and is an actuary in an insurance company.
Biography Date: July 2021
Marianne Duddy-Burke
North America
Secretary Official
Marianne Duddy-Burke is the Board member representing North America and Secretary of the GNRC Board. She is the Executive Director of DignityUSA, the largest and oldest organization of Catholics committed to justice, equality and full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) persons in the church and society. She has also served as the organization’s President, Vice-President, and New England Regional Director, as well as President of the Boston chapter. Marianne received a Master of Divinity degree from Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was an Honors graduate of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Marianne is DignityUSA’s primary spokesperson and has represented the organization in countless news stories and interviews in national and international media of all kinds. She speaks regularly at conferences throughout the United States on issues of importance to LGBTQI Catholics and their families. She was featured in the video DignityUSA: A Conversation with Marianne Duddy, and her work has been included in several books, including, most recently, Catholic Women Confront their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope.
Marianne took part in early discussions with members of the European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups, We Are Church, and other international Catholic networks that eventually led to the formation of GNRC. In 2017, she served as facilitator of the official meeting of GNRC’s Second Assembly in Munich, where the GNRC’s Constitution was adopted and the organization was formally established as a Non-Governmental Organization registered in Italy. In 2019, she was instrumental in bringing GNRC’s Third Assembly to Chicago, in conjunction with DignityUSA’s 50th anniversary national conference.
Marianne grew up in a devout Catholic family in New Jersey, where she attended Mt. St. Mary High School, run by the Sisters of Mercy. She continued her active religious life at Wellesley and was president of the Newman Center group representing Catholic students there, until she was forced to resign because she was a lesbian. Fortunately, she found the Boston chapter of Dignity soon after her graduation.
Marianne Duddy-Burke has over thirty-five years of non-profit and corporate leadership experience. In addition to her many years of work for DignityUSA, she has worked in the health care, human resources consulting, and elder care fields. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her spouse, Becky Duddy-Burke, and their two adopted teenaged children, Emily and Finn.
Marianne Duddy-Burke on action:
More information and sources about Marianne Duddy-Burke
‘And the truth shall set you free’: Dignity’s Gift to the World
LGBTQ Religious Archives Network: Marianne Duddy-Burke Profile
Biography Date: November 2020
Christopher Vella
Co-chair
Sexual Orientation
Christopher Vella was born in 1978 in Malta into a traditional Roman Catholic family. His education—primary, secondary and post-secondary—was all in Catholic institutions. As a teenager and young adult, he was a member of the Society of Christian Doctrine, an organization founded in 1907 by the only Roman Catholic saint from Malta, George Preca. Throughout his adult years he has also been active in the life of various parishes — leading youth groups, reading Scripture and helping lead the Mass.
Christopher studied history and sociology at university and became a history teacher, first at the secondary school level and now in a pre-tertiary University College associated with the University of Malta. While his primary research has been on the history of Malta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he has recently begun research on LGBT realities there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has been involved in the Malta Union of Teachers since 2010, currently serves as Union delegate at the University College, and represents the Union at European meetings of the European Education Trade Union (ETUCE) for Higher Education. He is also Secretary of the Malta Historical Society.
In 2015, Christopher attended the inaugural conference of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics in Rome and was elected to the group’s Steering Committee. Over the next two years, he worked with the committee to create the framework and legal foundation of the GNRC. In 2017, GNRC was established in Munich as an official Non-Governmental Organization registered in Italy. Christopher was elected to the GNRC’s first board of directors there, and together with Ruby Almeida as Co-Chair, he has continued to work diligently toward the growth of the organization.
The Maltese government adopted civil unions in April 2014 and legal same-sex marriage in July 2017. Christopher Vella and his husband, Tyrone Grima, were married in a civil ceremony in April 2018.
Christopher Vella on action:
“It is a positive step in the right direction that Pope Francis has made comments that support the legalisation of civil unions for same sex couples. It is, to some extent, ground-breaking, considering that the Church still considers homosexuality to be an ‘intrinsic disorder’ and has ruled out so far, any form of recognition of same-sex relationships.” (Christopher Vella about Pope Francis’ recent comments in support of same-gender unions, 2020)
More information and sources about Christopher Vella
LGBTQ Religious Archives Network: Christopher Vella Profile
Biography Date: November 2020
Eva Callueng
Asia Pacific
Eva Callueng is the Board member representing Asia-Pacific, and the Chair of the Prophecy and Justice Committee and active member of the Womyn’s Embrace Committee. She is also the founding Chair of Rainbow Catholics Philippines, which she was inspired to register after attending the Second Assembly of the GNRC in Munich, Germany, in 2017. She is currently the Chair of the Department of Professional Education in the College of Education of the University of the East in Manila.
Eva graduated from the University of the Philippines with a doctorate in the History and Philosophy of Education. Her dissertation is entitled “The Philosophical Framework of LGBT-inclusive education.” She received her master’s degree in Philosophy of Education and her bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the same university, where she served as the first lesbian Punong Babaylan (President) of UP Babaylan. UP Babaylan is the first duly-recognized student organization comprised of LGBT students in the Philippines. It was founded in 1992 as a support group for the marginalized LGBT students in the University.
From 2003 to 2007, Eva served on the Executive Committee of Task Force Pride Philippines, a network of LGBT groups, individuals, and allies. It is the official organizing network of the annual Metro Manila Pride March. Currently, she is also a Board member of Babaylanes, Inc., the organization of UP Babaylan Alumni that advocates for the creation of LGBT organizations in different schools nationwide.
From 2009 to 2016, she served as the editor of Pinoy LGBT Channel of the Philippine Online Chronicles. Also, in 2014, she served as editor of the book Buhay Bahaghari: The Filipino LGBT Chronicles, the first LGBT anthology in the Philippines published by the University of the Philippines Center for Women Studies (UP CWS).
Eva Callueng also serves as a lector-commentator in her parish.
Eva Callueng on action:
More information and sources about Eva Callueng
LGBTQ Religious Archives Network: Eva Callueng Profile
GNRC Justice and Prophecy Committee Official: Eva Callueng
To get more info and images of Eva Callueng work, click on the following link.
Biography Date: November 2020
Antonio Ortiz
Latin America
Antonio Ortiz Siliceo is the Board representative from the Latin American and Caribbean region. He was born in 1978 in Mexico City into a traditional Catholic family. He graduated from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) with a BA in Graphic Communication Design. He is co-founder of the Mexico Network of Rainbow Catholics (Red Católica Arcoíris México, or REDCAM), and has been co-chair since 2018. He was also coordinator of the Efetá Community in Mexico City (2015-2018), and continues to serve as an advisor to that community. He was a representative of Efetá and REDCAM in the second and third GNRC Assemblies, respectively.
He was a panelist during the Forum on Religions in Favor of Equal Marriage developed at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico City (2016), a promoter of the Mass for Inclusion in the Parish of the Sagrada Familia in Mexico City (2015), and a speaker at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) in a Homosexuality and Religion Conference (2015). In addition, he was part of the coordinating and working team of the Youth Ministry Commission of the Jesuits (2005-2007), earned the Diploma in Spirituality and Youth with the Ignatian Commission on Youth Ministry (2004-2005), and was Coordinator of Youth Ministry of the First Deanery of the First Vicarage of the Archdiocese of Mexico (2002-2004).
He writes: “Being able to share life experiences within the LGBTI+ community and discover in them the presence of God is what motivates me to serve on the board of GNRC and to participate in LGBTI+ Catholic organizations in my home country of Mexico. I have been blessed to be able to witness how members of the LGBTI + community have recovered their spirituality after having felt rejected, discriminated against or not deserving of God’s love.
Antonio Ortiz on action:
“I think that in Latin America the LGBTI+ Catholic movements are not very visible, because we are in general a traditional and conservative culture. However, being visible as rainbow Catholics can help give security to those people who still live ‘in the closet,’ by showing them that they can live their faith without being in conflict with their sexual identity and in harmony with their friends and family.
“In addition, my participation in GNRC in recent years has motivated me to help create a similar movement at the national level in Mexico. Today, my commitment is to witness the love of God from my own reality and sexual identity, and to help create tools that will further the spiritual growth of the worldwide LGBTI+ Catholic rainbow community.”
More information and sources about Antonio Ortiz
LGBTQ Religious Archives: Antonio Ortiz Profile
Pentecost united different LGBT + communities in Latin America in prayer
A Latin Rainbow Advent 2020: SUYAQUIQUI
Biography Date: November 2020
Cris Serra
Diversity
Cris Serra was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1974. In 2008, she arrived at Diversidade Católica (“Catholic Diversity”), the first Brazilian Catholic LGBTQI+ group, which had been recently created, in the year before. For six years, she moderated the group’s blog and social media and helped organize the public events they promoted. One of them was a one-day conference that took place during WYD 2013 in Rio de Janeiro – which was also attended by the Equally Blessed coalition’s pilgrims coming from the USA.
The next year, Cris helped organize another one-day conference, the 1st National Meeting of LGBT Catholics, again in Rio de Janeiro. The meeting brought together members of three already existing Brazilian LGBTQI+ Catholic groups, plus four other new groups. The participants joined forces to create a national network, the Rede Nacional de Grupos Católicos LGBT (“National Network of LGBT Catholic Groups”).
In 2017, Cris joined the committee organizing the 2nd National Meeting of LGBTI+ Catholics. The meeting was to take place in the city of São Paulo in June 2018, bringing together representatives of now fifteen existing Brazilian Catholic LGBTQI+ groups, plus the founders of two other groups that would arise soon after. At that meeting, the Rede Nacional de Grupos Católicos LGBT gained its constitution and a seven-member coordination team.
On that occasion, Cris was elected to that Rede Nacional’s first coordination team, as both the Brazilian Southeast’s representative and national coordinator, for the 2018-2020 term. The 3rd National Meeting had originally been scheduled for June 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the network’s then 22 member communities decided to postpone it to November 2021 and to extend that coordination team’s term until then.
As a member of the Rede Nacional’s first coordination team, Cris has collaborated with several projects, which include the creation of the network’s website. With two fellow coordinators, she edited an e-book entitled “Testemunhos da Diversidade” (“Testimonies of Diversity”) with a collection of “stories of love, faith and communion” by members of the communities that make up the Rede Nacional de Grupos Católicos LGBT. She also helped create Núcleo Madalenas, a group aiming to address the issue of gender diversity in the network through attention to LBQ women and non-binary people.
As a non-binary Latin American person, in December 2020 Cris joined the GNRC Board as Diversity Representative.
Cris Serra worked as a translator from 1996 to 2014 and has worked as a clinical psychologist since 2004. In 2015, she began researching gender and religion with an anthropological approach. Her master’s research gave rise to a book on the strategies used by the LGBTQI+ Brazilian Catholic groups to stay in the Church, published in 2019. Now, for her doctorate, she is researching the Brazilian movements of LGBTQI + Christians and Christian feminists, in the context of the rise of an extreme right government and the intensification of a moral crusade against the so-called “gender ideology” and human rights in general.
Cris Serra on action:
“The pierced Heart of Christ, surrounded and wounded by the crown of thorns, invites us to be in the world, like Christ, also with our hearts pierced by the pain of our sisters and brothers; and, like Christ, with our hearts on fire with a Love that calls us to responsibility and work and care for our sisters and brothers. The Sacred Heart calls us to commitment and to let ourselves be guided by this fire of Love in our decisions, in the certainty that the heart that was broken on the Cross “continues to beat, already resurrected”” (Cris Serra, The Feast of Pierced Heart of Chris)
More information and sources about Cris Serra
Cris Serra interview about the CDF Responsum (March, 2021) on YouTube
Biography Date: November 2020
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GNRC Board July 2019 – September 2022
- Ruby Almeida – Co-chair and Womyns Representative
- Christopher Vella – Co-chair and Sexual Diversity Representative
- Dumisani Dube – Treasurer and Africa Representative
- Marianne Duddy-Burke – Secretary and North America Representative
- Antonio Ortiz – Media Coordinator and Latin America Representative
- Eva Callueng – Asia Pacific Representative
- Anna De Carvalho – Europe Representative
- Cris Serra – Gender Diversity Representative
GNRC Board December 2017 – June 2019
- Ruby Almeida – Co-chair and Sexual-Gender Diversity Representative
- Christopher Vella – Co-chair and Europe Representative
- Brian Okollan – Treasurer and Africa Representative
- Benjamin Oh – Secretary and Asia-Pacific Representative
- Fernando González – Media Coordinator and Latin America Representative
- Andrea Rubera – Legal Coordinator and Parents Representative
- Francis DeBernardo – North America Representative
- Joseanne Peregin – Allies Representative
- Joanita Ssenfuka – Womyns Representative
GNRC Steering Committee October 2015 – November 2017
- Ruby Almeida – Co-chair and Womyns Representative
- Michael Brinkschroeder – Co-chair and Europe Representative
- Christopher Vella – Treasurer and Gender-Sexual Diversity Representative
- Benjamin Oh – Asia Pacific America Representative
- Fernando González – Media Coordinator and Latin America Representative
- Joseanne Peregin – Allies Representative
- Eros Shaw – Youth Representative
- Francis DeBernardo – North America Representative
- Pilot Mthambo – Africa Representative