Surrounded by soaring stained-glass windows and elaborate statues of saints, the two wives clasped hands as a Catholic priest in white vestments blessed them in the sanctuary of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Lincoln Park.
The prayer was brief, lasting only a few minutes on a weekend in late April, roughly four months after the pope’s landmark and controversial decision to formally allow blessings for same-sex couples, under certain constraints, in mid-December.
Kelli Knight, 48, planned the blessing as a surprise for her wife of four years, Myah Knight, 44, who had long loved the church of her alma mater, DePaul University.
Kelli Knight, who was raised Catholic but went on to become a pastor in the United Methodist Church, also felt a deep connection to St. Vincent de Paul, where the couple would occasionally attend services on Saturdays and during Holy Week.
“Do you freely recommit yourselves to love each other as holy spouses and to live in peace and harmony together forever?” the Rev. Joseph Williams asked.
“I do,” responded Kelli Knight, wearing a champagne-hued, off-the-shoulder dress and wrist corsage.
“I do,” added Myah Knight, in a black suit, fedora, gold tie and a corsage that matched her wife’s.
The priest then asked God to increase and consecrate their love for one another, adding that the rings they had exchanged are a sign of their commitment and fidelity.
“May they continue to prosper in Your grace and blessing, we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen,” the priest concluded, as the two wives crossed themselves.
Myah Knight recorded the blessing on her phone for prosperity. Kelli Knight posted the video on Instagram, mostly to share with family and friends.
But vitriol soon followed, as strangers began posting comments condemning the blessing.
“Anathema! Lust is not love,” one person wrote.
“How sad this is,” another comment read. “A total mockery of God’s design and desire for man and woman.”
“The ceremony is an exercise in the blessing of lesbian sodomy — and is blasphemous,” posted another commenter. “The chapel should be re-consecrated.”
Then in early May, the religious order Williams is a member of issued an apology “for the nature of a blessing he performed for a same-sex couple at his church on April 21.”
“Specifically, he said he regrets the language of the blessing and the use of vestments and the church itself, which he now recognizes were a violation of the norms approved by the Church,” said the statement by the Vincentians Congregation of the Mission, Western Province, in St. Louis.
The statement explains that while the pope has permitted same-sex blessings, they “do not equate to a wedding and should not employ the clothing and gestures that accompany a wedding.”
Williams and the Archdiocese of Chicago did not return requests for comment.
“The shape that the blessing took as portrayed in the video came about due to my attempt to provide for them a meaningful moment of God’s grace,” Williams said in the statement. “I wanted to do it well. A week or so after the fact, I viewed the video. I immediately realized that I had made a very poor decision in the words and visuals captured on the video.”
The priest concluded that it was a “valuable learning experience.”
“I am deeply sorry for any confusion and/or anger that this has caused, particularly for the People of God,” he added in the statement.
Myah and Kelli Knight said they were surprised by the attention the Instagram post attracted.
Kelli Knight said she hadn’t shared the video to make a political statement, though the historical significance of the blessing “wasn’t lost on us,” she added, particularly during this period of pivotal shifts for LGBTQ inclusion in Christianity.
Around the same time that controversy flared over their blessing, the United Methodist Church — one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States — made watershed strides to embrace its LGBTQ faithful, ending a half-century ban on same-sex marriage and ordination of gay clergy in May.
For Kelli Knight, who served as a Methodist pastor in the Chicago area for about 14 years, the end of these bans “was almost a surreal moment.”
Although gay marriages and LGBTQ ordinations have long taken place in Methodist churches in the Chicago area — and the denomination’s ban was unevenly enforced — Kelli Knight said she felt relief when the discriminatory policies were lifted.
“There was this tremendous joy that finally there would be no barriers,” she said. “It was an incredible spirit moment.”
As for their blessing in the Catholic church, Kelli Knight had briefly taken the post off Instagram when the angry responses began piling up.
But she decided to put it back online, as “it was likely we were one of the first couples in the country, if not the world, to have this” blessing.
“It’s important for people to see both sides,” she said. “As great as the strides are that the queer community has made, there still is a lot of ignorance and not a lot of exposure. There’s still a lot of hatred out there.”
Myah and Kelli Knight noted there were also some supportive comments.
“My boyfriend and I look forward to getting married and receiving the blessing of the Holy Church,” one male stranger wrote. “What a beautiful moment for you! Congratulations!!!!”
Kelli Knight said she kept the recording public, in part, “to celebrate how far we’ve come.”
“I think it’s an important witness to Catholics. To Methodists. To people of faith. And to people of no faith,” she said. “I think it’s just so reflective of where we’re at, still.”
‘Celebrate love as it is’
The wives say the critics on social media didn’t diminish the sacred nature of the blessing.
“For me, the comments were very projective,” Myah Knight said. “It probably just came out of a lot of fear …. I was hopeful that there would be more people that would be willing to be open and celebrate love as it is.”
Myah and Kelli Knight were dressed up to attend a Chicago adult queer prom event after the blessing; neither attended prom during high school.
They were preparing to move to Arizona, where they now live; Kelli Knight is planning to start a new job as associate pastor of a Methodist church in Tucson in July. The blessing was to be one of their last milestones together in Chicago.
Kelli Knight added that the controversy afterward “in no way robs us of the joy and love that was celebrated before God that day.”
“Our experience with the priest was that he was providing spiritual care to a couple who was seeking God’s blessing,” she said. “We want the Catholic Church to continue this ministry to the queer community because it is so important and so meaningful to people of faith.”
While Pope Francis’ formal authorization allowing priests to bless same-sex couples marked a radical shift in policy — part of a decadelong attempt at greater LGBTQ inclusion — it still maintained a ban on gay marriage, adding that these blessings cannot include set rituals, clothing or gestures that would typically take place in a wedding.
Around the globe, some Catholic leaders rejected the pope’s stance on same-sex blessings, with bishops in Africa, Poland and other parts of the world refusing to implement the policy.
The Rev. Gerald Murray, a Catholic priest in New York, said in an email that same-sex blessings give “the mistaken impression that the Church no longer considers sexual acts involving two men or two women to be sinful given that the Church cannot logically ask God to bless and favor sinful relationships.”
Murray disagreed with the priest at St. Vincent de Paul’s description of the Knights’ blessing as “a moment of God’s grace.”
“God’s revelation found in Sacred Scripture unequivocally condemns homosexual acts,” said Murray, co-author of the book “Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crisis Facing the Catholic Church and Society.” “God does not bless sin, and does not bless the occasion of sin.”
But many Catholics applauded the Vatican’s declaration. Steven Millies, director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, called it an “early Christmas gift.”
“Any person or any object is suitable for blessing. In that sense, Fiducia Supplicans didn’t say anything new,” he said. “But it said that … in a concrete application, LGBTQ people are in the church. We see you. We recognize that the relationships that you’re in, the experiences that you’re having, we recognize that those are real. And we’re welcoming you and we want you to feel welcomed in the church. We want to accompany you.”
While the pope’s approval of allowing same-sex blessings was “a gesture,” it didn’t go far enough in terms of LGBTQ inclusion, said Mary Donnelly, president of Dignity Chicago, an organization that ministers to LGBTQ Catholics and operates independently from the Catholic Church.
Donnelly called the priest’s apology following the Knights’ blessing “sad.”
“Dignity’s mission is for the equal standing of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the church,” she said. “That equality isn’t there. That is what we fight for.”
New day in ministry
Leaving the Catholic Church had been hard for Kelli Knight, who felt an early calling to ministry but knew that, as a woman, she couldn’t be ordained a Catholic priest.
As a young adult, she felt drawn to the teachings of the United Methodist Church and went on to graduate from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston. Myah Knight was raised in predominantly Black Baptist churches in Oklahoma; from early childhood, she was told from the pulpit that homosexuals were condemned to hell, she recalled. She joined the Methodist Church as an adult and was baptized 10 years ago.
“It was a sense of renewal,” she said. “And I felt celebrated.”
Myah and Kelli Knight were married in December 2020 at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Yet they were aware of the broader denomination’s anti-LGBTQ stance: The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline declared homosexual practice “incompatible with Christian teaching” in 1972.
“I wasn’t sure if there was a future for me in ministry,” Kelli Knight said. “I didn’t want to be serving continually looking over my shoulder, worrying about being charged. Worrying about going on trial. Worrying about the possibility of being defrocked.”
The concern was so great that Kelli Knight said she briefly left pastoral leadership in 2022, though she felt drawn back and will be returning to ministry in July.
The Rev. Britt Cox, executive pastor of First United Methodist Church of Evanston, described a similar sense of trepidation.
She felt called to ministry at the age of 12, while growing up in the Methodist Church in Texas.
“But in college, I started to understand myself fully as a lesbian,” she said. “And I knew very quickly how the denomination felt about me, and that part of my story would be very difficult for me to share with my church at home.”
In 2019, during a special legislative session in St. Louis, the denomination strengthened its LGBTQ bans. Cox, who had attended with her wife, Jessica Hager, described the experience as “heartbreaking.”
“It really did put a new fear in our personal life,” she said. “Now it’s easier for me to be brought up on charges. What would that mean for my livelihood? What would that mean for my sense of identity moving forward?”
Disputes over LGBTQ policies have been a source of deep conflict within the Methodist Church for years. Roughly a quarter of U.S. congregations — more than 7,600 — received permission to leave the denomination since 2019. These were predominantly conservative-leaning congregations exiting over the church’s failure to enforce rules against ordination of openly LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages.
Then in early May, in a historic vote in North Carolina, the Methodist Church struck down its anti-LGBTQ policies. Cox was among the delegates who cast a vote.
“As an openly queer delegate — that was one reason I was elected, to be a voice not only for churches but also for queer clergy — to go with that charge to be my full self and vote on church law, to hopefully make it better, was such an honor,” she said.
To Kelli Knight, the change marked “a new day in ministry.”
“God is breathing new life and new witness into Christianity,” she said. “I see the connection in both the Roman Catholic witness and the Methodist witness, some of the last Christian denominations to celebrate and embrace queer folk. … Part of what it means to be part of the kingdom of God means being fully who you are. And fully welcomed.”
The Associated Press contributed.
