Hello and thank you for taking the time to read how Jesus and Mary have transformed my life as a Catholic same sex attracted or gay man.
I grew up in the republic of Ireland in county Clare in a very good Catholic family and community in the countryside.
As a child I served at mass for many years and when I was old enough (12!) I was a regular reader at mass in our small parish.
My mother was a very prayerful woman who would often talk to me about Jesus and His presence both in the priest and in the Blessed Sacrament and I would often see her staying up late at night to pray.She had a special devotion to Padre Pio and so from a very early age I had a keen belief in miracles and in the reality of the power of God even if I had absolutely no idea how he worked or what God could do with my life!I used to admire my mother’s faith and felt somewhat frustrated that despite my good results in school, I simply couldn’t understand it!
When I was 19 my mother told me that one of my old school was gay. “Isn’t it awful” she proceeded with a “thank God none of mine are”.
I grew up in a very traditional family and I guess that my parents believed that these things only happened in big cities or to families who didn’t pray.
Whatever the case, at the time there was a terrible stigma about being gay and a lot of bullying for anyone who was suspected of it. What parents would want that for their child?
My mother’s very negative and fearful reaction to my friend being gay affected me profoundly and further reinforced my own fear and shame regarding my own growing homosexual feelings.
I was a bit of a brain box at schools and 590 points in my leaving certificate secured me a place in Dublin where I studied actuarial maths.
Study was my golden excuse for not having a girlfriend and I flew through college and the professional exams and qualified as an actuary at 23!
My parents were delighted as any parents would be but I was miserable as deep in my heart I knew that I had no interest in finance and that I was gay. My life was a mess inside despite the outward appearance of having it all together!
Six months later after moving to Paris to get away I fell apart. I had my first of several major breakdowns. I couldn’t eat or sleep and the next 2 years were a downward spiral!
I tried psychologists and psychiatrists, I tried psychotherapists, hypnotherapists and more. Nothing worked! I got progressively worse and by 26 I could take no more. I didn’t want to commit suicide but I had nothing left!
I begged God to help me and besides believing that He existed I had no belief that He was the God of catholics or jews or muslims or whatever!
I believed strongly in God but in all honesty I had no great belief in Jesus.
Growing up watching Father Ted and hearing of all the priests who had gone astray gave me no faith at all in the catholic church and while I’d heard of many stories of the saints like St Francis and Mary Magdalene, I’d never heard of a saint who was gay or same sex attracted as some prefer to describe it!
Why didn’t the catholic church talk about gays? What did they expect me and others like me to do? What was God’s plan for people like me?!
It was obvious to me that God loved everyone including gay people but on a practical level, how did God want us to live our human lives on earth?
And so about 2 weeks after a prayer that went something like this
“God help me, I don’t want to die but I don’t have the strength to live” I had a mystical experience of Jesus!
I was sitting beside a friend and we decided to do some prayer together! I closed my eyes and I saw Jesus and Mary looking at me with a warm loving smile and their hands wide open.
Instantaneously I understood that I was loved and accepted and that Jesus had a plan for me. That day it’s like a manhole was removed from the bottom of my soul and the light began to shine in!
As mad as it sounds Jesus began to talk to me and He told me to follow my heart and His direction! He told me to leave Ireland and to go to a town in the south of France and just to trust!
I did it and understandably my family went crazy with worry as I had my “double coming out”.
“I’m gay and spiritual and I’m seeing Jesus and hearing him speaking to me and by the way I’ve left my big job and I’m on the ferry to France”
They thought that I had gone mad and that maybe I had schizophrenia or a psychosis and yet they couldn’t figure out how I was ok!!
How on earth would Jesus be talking to their son? This only happened to the saints and he was certainly no saint!
Fortunately my uncle was a practicing Catholic and a spiritual sort of a man and when I told him he understood it immediately!
“That’s Jesus” he said. “Most people think He’s dead but He’s alive!”. He went on to tell me that he had a similar experience twenty years beforehand!
And so like that I began my new life in France and in prayer I began learning about the spiritual world and the area of inner healing.
In short; negative memories such as abuse and bullying can block the flow of love in our souls and eventually lead to terrible depression etc.
I began to see spiritual things and I came to realise that God had given poor little me a healing gift. I’d pray and a feeling of electricity would flow through me and I’d cry and so would the other person. It was (and still is) amazing.
After 3 years in France I had the opportunity to go to India where I received phenomenal inner-healing at the ‘Divine Retreat Centre” in Kerela, a place where the gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit were flowing in abundance.
From India I was guided to Australia where I spent 3 and a half years.
I first stayed with a catholic religious community which was very prayful. They had a specific mission for evangelisation and were very involved also in the charismatic healing ministry. The only trouble was that again they didn’t want me to talk openly about my gay experiences more out of fear than anything else. I felt very frustrated as it seemed that my story and mission didn’t fit in anywhere.
I later moved to Sydney and spent 3 years with a christian healing ministry who specialised in sexual issues. I received an awful lot more healing and acceptance here and it was exceptionally healing to be in a church environment where I could be open to everyone about all aspects of my life and story including my sexuality.
Yet there was something missing in my single, chaste and prayerful life and I didn’t know what it was.
After much prayer God introduced me to another same sex attracted Catholic man and we became very good friends.
I suddenly realised that what was missing in my life was companionship and someone to love and be loved by.
Jesus began to show me that not all aspects of my same sex attraction or same sex relationships were bad or disordered as I had previously been led to believe and that my desire to love other men was from Him.
It was like been given the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle as I realised that it was possible to love other men while remaining faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
We are human beings with bodies and it simply did not seem either reasonable or feasible to expect all gay people to remain single all their lives.
Not everyone was able to understand my new friendship and some even feared that it was the work of the evil spirit. I knew that it wasn’t!
This brought an end to my season in Australia and I returned back to Ireland for 2 years as I allowed God to introduce me to more and more gay people, people whom I had kept well away from up to this point!
Suddenly God changed my thinking and rather than seeing other gay people as the potential ‘occasion of sin’, I began to see them as the ‘opportunity to love’ and through this my own healing and self understanding accelerated further.
Yet in all this, I continued to go to daily mass and eucharist adoration, weekly confession and strove to live as chastely as possible.
It was most exciting and yet so difficult as most gay men were thirsting for sex and yet one thing was obvious, that behind all the sexual promiscuity were a lot of very gentle, very sensitive men looking for true love and understanding.
I listened to countless stories, prayed with and hugged hundreds of men and often cried afterwards as I heard about the harrowing pain of their lives.
Almost every man I met had been tempted with suicide, had struggled with depression and had lost contact with God.
At this point I went on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje for the first time and I returned a year later for a second week which got extended and so I ended up staying there for 6 months.
The thirst to help gay people wouldn’t leave me but I felt so alone and couldn’t do it on my own.
At this point I met Séamus for the first time and we immediately became great friends. He too was saved by Jesus who pulled him out of a life of sex and drugs in the gay scene.
Together Our Lady sent us out evangelising in the gay scene and it was in Split (Croatia) where we met Toni, a young transgender man who wanted to give his life to Jesus..
And so our little group was formed and off we went to London where we providentially met Monsignor Keith Barltrop who became our spiritual director and who welcomed us into his parish.
This is where we began our ministry “Medjugorje LGBT Ministry” with evenings of rosary, Mass, Eucharist Adoration, Testimonies and fellowship with the help of many other Catholics.
London is also where I met Rayne who has been my partner since 2020 and who has shown me so much unconditional love and support. In 2022 Rayne and I visited my parents in Ireland where we were warmly welcomed.
Rayne too is Catholic and loves Jesus and he has a woneedful gift of singing worship songs. We live a chaste and prayerful life full of lots of adventures and hope to inspire other gay people out there who are struggling to find peace and happiness in their lives.
So if you have come this far you can see that Jesus has truly brought me around the world in more ways than one and shown me that He loves me and accepts me and knows what is good for me.
Never in a million years would I have imagined that my life would work out this way and yet I can say that I am profoundly happy and have a love and zeal for life. I pray every day that other gay people will come to know the love of Jesus and allow him to lead them and guide them on the road of life like he has done for me!