Pope Francis meets with trans activists after denouncing gender-affirming care

Pope Francis on Saturday met with a group of LGBTQ+ activists and allies who encouraged him to overturn the Catholic Church’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people.

“I really wanted to share with Pope Francis about the joy that I have being a transgender Catholic person,” Michael Sennett, who took part in the meeting, told Reuters.

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The 80-minute gathering, with about a dozen guests who met privately with the Pope at his residence, comes after the Vatican’s doctrinal office rejected gender-affirming care in April, claiming it “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

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One German trans activist called the declaration “dangerously ignorant,” while LGBTQ+ groups expressed disappointment the Church did not seek input from transgender stakeholders.  

The gathering, not listed on the pope’s official schedule, seemed to be aimed at addressing the sleight.

“We expressed that as the church makes policies in this area that it’s very important to speak with transgender individuals,” said Cynthia Herrick, an endocrinologist at a St. Louis clinic who took part in the meeting.

“The pope was very receptive,” she said. “He listened very empathetically. He also shared that he always wants to focus on the person, the well-being of the person.”

Sennett, a trans man from Boston, said he shared with Francis “the joy that I get from hormone replacement therapy and the surgeries that I’ve had that make me feel comfortable in my body.”

New Ways Ministry, an LGBTQ+ Catholic advocacy group based in the U.S., organized the papal detente.

“The message really is that we need to listen to the experiences of transgender people,” said Sister Jeannine Gramick, the group’s co-founder, who personally asked Francis for the invitation to meet. His acceptance “means that the church is coming along, the church is joining the modern era,” she said.

Gramick has been in correspondence with Francis, and he first welcomed her for a meeting at the Vatican last year. New Ways Ministry has long been a target of conservative Catholics, including the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis, who has rejected his predecessor’s hard line against the LGBTQ+ community, has made the question, “Who am I to judge?” the driving force of his campaign to welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics into the Church, even as official Vatican policy hasn’t always tracked with his public declarations.

Last December, Francis approved blessing same-sex couples just a month after the Vatican said transgender people could be baptized over the objections of some U.S bishops.

The same month, Francis fired a MAGA-aligned bishop over his inflammatory anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

The pope’s outreach on Saturday is just the latest face-to-face encounter with LGBTQ+ people undertaken by the pontiff.

Last year, a group of transgender women were invited to join the Pope to mark the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor. One former sex worker sat next to the Pontiff making small talk as they enjoyed a tiramisu dessert.

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