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WorldPride 2025 in DC: Karmic Redemption or Karmic Disaster?
This year’s festival could be a test of enormous consequence.
The first WorldPride Festival took place 25 years ago in Rome.
The inaugural, international celebration/conference/music festival was put on shaky ground from the get go, when Rome’s mayor, Francesco Rutelli, under relentless pressure from the Vatican and Italian conservatives, withdrew city funding. Counterpressure from his own leftist party forced Rutelli to reverse that decision and restore the pledged funds, allowing the event to proceed as planned.
As 250,000 LGBTQ+ folks and allies marched to the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus, Pope John Paul II addressed a crowd in St. Peter’s Square, declaring the event an “offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world.”
It should come as no surprise that, since its premiere international celebration of sexual diversity in 2000, WorldPride has frequently been fraught with controversy and opposition.
Jerusalem’s planned 2005 festival had to be postponed due to tensions arising from Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Rescheduled for the following year, the event’s primary sponsor (Jerusalem Open House) tagged it with a very apropos theme…
