It’s a rare
opportunity to meet the pope. It’s even rarer
if you’re a transgender Catholic.
However, on
November 19, in Torvaianica, Italy, a
community of transwomen, many who are sex
workers, were welcomed and seated in a vast
auditorium with over a thousand other poor and
homeless people as Pope Francis’s guests for
lunch to celebrate the Catholic Church’s World
Day of the Poor. This wasn’t their first time
lunching with the pontiff. They have received
the VIP seats to Pope Francis’s monthly
gatherings since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We
transgenders here feel a bit more human
because the fact that Pope Francis brings us
closer to the Church is a beautiful thing,”
Carla Segovia, 46, a sex worker, told Reuters. “Because we
need some love.”
Torvaianica, a
run-down seaside town just 20 miles south of
Rome, has been a haven for this community of
transwomen. They are seen, safe, cared for,
and welcomed. Even though Torvaianica is an
impoverished town, this community of
transwomen has readily accessible free medical
care, vaccinations, cash assistance, and
feminine toiletries, no small feat for
transgender communities worldwide.
Is Francis
displaying a spiritual transformation toward
transgender people from where he was nearly a
decade ago?
The pontiff’s
transphobic vitriol unleashed itself
unapologetically back in the day.
In the
pontiff’s 2015 tome, “Pope Francis: This
Economy Kills,” Francis compares transgender
people to nuclear weapons. His reason is that
this unlikely pair destroy and desecrate God’s
holy and ordained order of creation.
In an interview
with the National Catholic Reporter, Francis
spewed the following transphobic remarks:
“Let’s
think of the nuclear arms, of the
possibility to annihilate in a few instants
a very high number of human beings,” he
continues.
“Let’s
think also of genetic manipulation, of the
manipulation of life, or the gender theory,
that does not recognize the order of
creation.”
“With
this attitude, man commits a new sin, that
against God the Creator. The true custody of
creation does not have anything to do with
the ideologies that consider man like an
accident, like a problem to eliminate.”
“God
has placed man and woman and the summit of
creation and has entrusted them with the
earth. The design of the Creator is written
in nature.”
Has the Vatican
changed its views on transgender people?
Also, in
November, the Vatican agreed to baptize
transgender Catholics and allow them to be
godparents.
This is a 180
from 2000 when the Catholic Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith denounced the
existence of transgender people.
“The
key point is that the transsexual surgical
operation is so superficial and external
that it does not change the personality. If
the person is a male, he remains male. If
she was female, she remains female.”
Have both Pope
Francis and the Vatican come to understand
that their denunciation of our present-day
gender theories and the fluidity of human
sexuality not only perpetuates spiritual harm
and alienation to our trans community but also
unwittingly invites physical harm - done in
the name of God? Francis’s comments, earlier
this year, calling for the decriminalization
of homosexuality were hailed by LGBTQ+
advocates as a milestone that would help end
harassment and violence against us, as he
publicly distinguished between homosexual acts
as a sin or a crime.
Nothing in
terms of church doctrine might change moving
forward, but November showed promise for
transgender Catholics in the future. However,
Pope Francis is notorious for flip-flopping
and back-pedaling when it comes to
full-throated inclusion of the LGBTQ+
community in the church.
However,
addressing poverty has been one of Francis’s
inclusive and uncompromising stances. One of
the Catholic social teaching principles is the
“preferential option for the poor,” also a
core tenet in Liberation Theology. The
Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor, with
the message “Do not turn your face away from
anyone who is poor,” is an example of the
church at its best regarding welcoming
everyone. It allows the faces of transgender
people not to be hidden.
To
Torvaianica’s small and isolated community of
transwomen, Pope Francis, without condemnation
from his bishops and conservative Catholics,
can uphold every month the biblical mandate in
Matthew 25:31-40 concerning food for the poor
and welcome all in.
“They
didn’t see us as normal people; they saw us
as the devil,” Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a
Colombian transgender woman known as
Consuelo, told NBC News. “Then Pope Francis
arrived, and the doors of the church opened
for us.”
