For almost 19 years, Marianne Duddy-Burke has been at the helm of the oldest Catholic LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, DignityUSA. Her involvement with the group preceded her becoming executive director by decades.
Duddy-Burke stated in a Facebook post that she was “ready to make more space for time with my family, do more writing and speaking that I love, and take life a little more slowly.”
DignityUSA was founded in 1969 by an Augustinian priest, Fr. Patrick Nidorf. Two years later, a bishop ordered Nidorf to cease his ministry to LGBTQ+ Catholics, and the organization became lay-led.
In 1986, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s oldest department, which is charged with protecting and promoting Catholic faith and morals, banned Dignity from meeting in church facilities. Since that time, Dignity chapters have held worship services, programs and social events in other churches or community centers.
Priests were threatened with being banned from celebrating the sacraments if they led a Dignity liturgy.
That order has never been reversed.
1986 was also the year in which the head of that department, then-Cardinal Ratzinger (eventually Pope Benedict XVI) issued the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” In that document, Ratzinger referred to same-sex relations as “a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.”
During her tenure, Duddy-Burke has tirelessly urged the Vatican to be more welcoming to LGBTQ+ Catholics. In 2023, she met with the late Pope Francis and, in 2025, traveled to Rome as the papal conclave met to choose the new Pope, Leo XIV.
Additionally, Dignity expanded its presence worldwide. In 2015, under her leadership, the group helped found the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics. That organization is made up of groups and individuals committed to providing pastoral care and seeking justice for LGBTQ+ Catholics around the globe.
According to DignityUSA President Meli Barber, the search for Duddy-Burke’s replacement will soon be initiated, and Duddy-Burke will assist in the transition.
Of Duddy-Burke, Barber said on the organization’s website: “Her care for and ministry to chapters, her deep personal relationships with countless Dignity members, her connections to LGBTQIA+ Catholics around the world, the relationships she has built with other progressive Catholic organizations, her skill as a public representative, the respect with which she is universally regarded, and her tireless devotion to service all leave an indelible mark. It is not an exaggeration to say that she has shaped not only Dignity but a generation of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.”
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