(LifeSiteNews) — Father Daniel Horan, a Franciscan friar minor known for his pro-LGBT rhetoric, announced in a column for the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) last week that he would pursue laicization.

Horan, who currently serves as the director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality and professor at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, has made numerous pro-LGBT statements and written several columns that break with Church teaching on same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism, promoted female deacons, and criticized the pro-life movement.

“After a substantial period of prayerful discernment, I have concluded that I am no longer called to remain a friar minor,” Horan wrote. The friar compared his situation to that of his order’s patron, St. Francis of Assisi, saying his laicization was like the many changes the saint made during his life.  

“Francis often changed his mind, such as when he approved of formal education for the brothers after years of objecting to it. His understanding about community life changed as witnessed in the development of his earlier rule (the Regula non bullata), which took shape over more than a decade. And he shifted his expectations about what God was calling him to do in this life, such as when brothers started following him and even a woman named Clare joined the community – neither of which he sought on his own,” the friar wrote.

Horan also offered some details about his discernment, underscoring that he started to consider leaving the priesthood during the COVID pandemic and received advice from many people, including a psychologist, before taking a formal period of vocational discernment. That ultimately led him to petition the Holy See to be dispensed of the obligations of holy orders.

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Over the years, Horan has made several statements that contradict Church teaching on homosexual “marriage” and other issues. In 2015, the friar wrote an op-ed in the Jesuit America Magazine that celebrated the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which effectively legalized homosexual “marriage” across the nation. In that column, the Franciscan also called for the Church to “’overcome and eradicate’ such discrimination [against LGBT people] and affirm the ‘fundamental rights of the person.’”

The Catholic Church teaches, in accord with Sacred Scripture and Tradition, that all homosexual activity is a mortal sin that “cries out to heaven for vengeance,” and that same-sex attraction, while not a sin in itself, is “objectively disordered.”

In a 2020 NCR column, Horan denounced critics of “gender ideology,” describing the term as a “boogeyman” of those promoting “right-wing political and ecclesial agendas” to discriminate against LGBT individuals. The phrase “gender ideology” is commonly used by Catholics and conservatives to describe the push for same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism throughout society. The friar went further, writing that “gender ideology” critics “don’t know what they are talking about” and urged them to study the work of academics who promote the theory that gender and biological sex are not necessarily the same thing.

In late 2023, the Franciscan announced in an NCR column that he had deleted his X account after receiving backlash for a self-described “transgender-affirming” post that said in part, “Trans women are women. Trans men are men.” The Franciscan friar said he left the platform because of the rise of “antisemitism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia” among X users, which he attributed to Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform and his subsequent reinstatement of previously censored accounts.

Several prominent Catholic clerics have spoken out against gender ideology and transgenderism, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, who, in an August commencement speech at Thomas Aquinas College, condemned it as an “attack on reason and nature.”

“[T]o say that I can change my nature: I was born a male and that I can, through the use of various chemicals and mutilation, make myself a woman – this is an attack on reason, on nature,” Burke said. The American cardinal’s 2019 “Declaration of Truths“ document, which was signed jointly alongside Bishop Athanasius Schneider and other bishops, states:

“Concerning gender theory, the declaration reaffirms that ‘the male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities created by the wise will of God.’ It, therefore, terms gender reassignment surgery a ‘rebellion against natural and divine law’ and a ‘grave sin.’”

Horan also recently called for women to be ordained to the diaconate, arguing that their exclusion from receiving holy orders is the result of “sexism.” And in 2019, in the wake of a group of Covington Catholic students being falsely accused of racism at that year’s March for Life, the friar called the annual march “repulsive.”

Horan will continue working as a professor and writing his NCR columns.