Welcoming LGBT+ Students As a Challenge for Catholic Schools in France

In France, the contract of association between the State and most Catholic schools obliges the latter, among other requirements, to accept pupils without restriction and to follow the National Education curriculum. This situation means that Catholic schools must cater for pupils whose sexual orientation or gender identity undermines the cis-heteropatriarchal model promoted by the Church. Indeed, Catholic dogma takes an extremely firm stance on these issues, despite a few marginal statements by Pope Francis. How, then, can the Catholic school, as an institution, respond to the contractual requirements that bind it to the State without denying its anthropological principles?

As part of our PhD work – carried out at the Faculty of Education of the Paris Catholic Institute, under the supervision of Fabienne Serina-Karsky – on support for sexual minorities and non-traditional gender identities in secondary schools run by the lasallian congregation in France, we propose firstly to discuss the way in which Catholic education in France uses its anthropological foundations to respond to the particularities of LGBT+ pupils, and the limits encountered by this approach. Then, from an interactionist perspective, based on interviews with practitioners and linked to life stories of former pupils of Catholic schools who identify as LGBT+, we will show how a professional approach that relies, at the very least, on not taking account of gender identities and sexual orientations contributes to school angst and encourages situations of exclusion. Finally, we will try to show, through examples, that there are anthropological approaches that favour welcoming and, above all, taking these pupils into account. Ultimately, we will demonstrate that such a stance can prove beneficial for the entire educational community and could be a response to the masculine domination that rules within the school system, as showed by Sylvie Ayral (Ayral, 2011).