Pope Francis Meets, Dines with Trans Women After Controversial Baptism Decision

By BERT HOOVER

Pope Francis recently hosted a Vatican luncheon for a group of transgender women, many of whom are sex workers or migrants from Latin America, according to Fox News.

This gathering took place as part of the Catholic Church’s “World Day of the Poor.”

The pope and these transgender women have developed a close relationship, which originated during the COVID-19 pandemic when the pontiff assisted them when they were unable to work.

Now, they have monthly VIP visits with the pope and receive support in the form of medicine, money, and other essentials.

The luncheon was a broader event, with around 1,200 impoverished or homeless individuals also attending inside the papal audience hall to enjoy a full meal and dessert.

This invitation to transgender women aligns with a recent Vatican document that generated controversy.

Released earlier in the month, the document affirms that individuals dealing with gender identity disorders are permitted to be baptized or serve as godparents under specific conditions.

While responding to a query from Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro, the guidance from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Pope Francis, maintains that the baptism or involvement as godparents must not cause “scandal” or “disorientation.”

This nuanced stipulation has been praised by LGBTQ+ advocates.

Pope Francis: ‘Who Am I to Judge?’

Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations are applauding Pope Francis for his message of inclusivity, recognizing that gay and transgender individuals have historically felt marginalized within a church that officially characterizes homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered.”

Francis has been on a trajectory toward greater acceptance, starting with his notable “Who am I to judge” remark in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, AP reports.

In January, he reinforced this stance by asserting that “being homosexual is not a crime.”

The pope has consistently evolved his position, emphasizing that everyone, unequivocally, is a child of God, loved by God, and welcomed in the church – a sentiment expressed with the resounding declaration, “todos, todos, todos” (everyone, everyone, everyone).

However, this judgment-free perspective isn’t universally shared within the Catholic Church.

A recent synod, a gathering of bishops and laypeople at the Vatican, stopped short of explicitly advocating for the welcoming of LGBTQ+ Catholics.

Pope Francis’ approach has faced strong opposition from conservative Catholics, including cardinals.

Despite internal divisions, LGBTQ+ advocacy groups like GLAAD and DignityUSA see Pope Francis’ inclusive tone as a powerful message.

They believe it could encourage political and cultural leaders to cease the persecution, exclusion, and discrimination against transgender individuals.

Lunch with Pope Francis

Latin America migrants and sex workers had the opportunity to share a meal with Pope Francis featuring cannelloni pasta filled with spinach and ricotta, followed by meatballs in tomato-basil sauce and tiramisu for dessert, THEM noted.

“We transgenders in Italy feel a bit more human because the fact that Pope Francis brings us closer to the Church is a beautiful thing,” Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old sex worker from Argentina, said, expressing gratitude.

Claudia Vittoria Salas, a trans tailor and house cleaner from Argentina, had a personal connection to the recent declaration by the Catholic Church regarding trans godparents.

She shared that she had previously worked as a sex worker to support her nieces and nephews, to whom she served as a godparent. She found herself seated next to Pope Francis during the lunch.

“Before, the church was closed to us. They didn’t see us as normal people; they saw us as the devil. Then Pope Francis arrived, and the doors of the church opened for us,” Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a trans woman from Colombia, said, reflecting on the changing perception of the church.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope forcibly removes leading US conservative, Texas bishop Strickland

FILE – Bishop Joseph Strickland walks in front of a reliquary bearing the bones of Saint Maria Goretti, dubbed “The Little Saint of Great Mercy,” into the sanctuary at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, in Tyler, Texas. Pope Francis on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023 forcibly removed from office the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a conservative active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and some of his priorities.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Pope Francis on Saturday forcibly removed from office the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a conservative active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and some of his priorities.

A one-line statement from the Vatican said Francis had “relieved” Bishop Joseph Strickland of the pastoral governance of Tyler and appointed the bishop of Austin as the temporary administrator.

Strickland, 65, has emerged as a critic of Francis, accusing him in a tweet earlier this year of “undermining the deposit of faith.” He has been particularly critical of Francis’ recent meeting on the future of the Catholic Church during which hot-button issues were discussed, including ways to better welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The Vatican earlier this year sent in investigators to look into his governance of the diocese, amid reports he was making doctrinally unorthodox claims.

The Vatican has not released the findings of the investigation, and Strickland had insisted he wouldn’t resign voluntarily. He had said in media interviews that he was given a mandate to serve by the late Pope Benedict XVI and couldn’t abdicate that responsibility, and had complained that he hadn’t been told what the pope’s investigators were looking into.

It is rare for the pope to forcibly remove a bishop from office. Bishops are required to offer to resign when they reach 75. When the Vatican uncovers issues with governance or other problems that require a bishop to leave office before then, the Vatican usually seeks to pressure him to resign for the good of his diocese and the church.

That was the case when another U.S. bishop was forced out earlier this year following a Vatican investigation. Knoxville, Tenn. Bishop Richard Stika resigned voluntarily, albeit under pressure, following allegations he mishandled sex abuse allegations, and his priests complained about his leadership and behavior.

But with Strickland, the Vatican statement made clear he had not offered to resign, and that Francis had instead “relieved” him from his job.

Most recently, Strickland had criticized Francis’ monthlong closed-door debate on making the church more welcoming and responsive to the needs of Catholics today. The meeting debated a host of previously taboo issues, including women in governance roles and welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics, but in the end, its final document didn’t veer from established doctrine.

Ahead of the meeting, Strickland said it was a “travesty” that such things were even on the table for discussion.

”Regrettably, it may be that some will label as schismatics those who disagree with the changes being proposed,” Strickland wrote in a public letter in August. “Instead, those who would propose changes to that which cannot be changed seek to commandeer Christ’s Church, and they are indeed the true schismatics.”

There was no immediate comment from the diocese, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops merely posted an English translation of the Vatican statement with data about the size of the diocese.

In a social media post sent a few hours before the Vatican’s noon announcement, Strickland wrote a prayer about Christ being the “way, the truth and the life, yesterday, today and forever.”

Complete Article HERE!

Vatican says transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents

Pope Francis greets crowds during the weekly general audience in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Wednesday.

By and 

The Vatican released guidance that says transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and witness weddings in the Roman Catholic Church, under certain circumstances, reflecting a continued opening by Pope Francis to the LBGTQ+ community.

The document, signed by Francis and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, was published on the website of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Wednesday. It responds to questions from a bishop in Brazil.

A transgender person “may receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful,” so long as this does not cause “scandal or disorientation” among other Catholics, terms that were not further defined in the document, dated Oct. 31. It also says that transgender people “can be admitted to the role of godfather or godmother” and that “there is nothing” in canon law prohibiting transgender people from witnessing marriage ceremonies.

The guidance published by the Vatican is not new and largely stems from a “confidential note” on “transsexualism” published in December 2018, the Dicastery said. It was not clear whether parts of the guidance had been publicly shared before. It contradicts a 2015 ruling from the Vatican, which at the time barred a transgender man in Spain from becoming a godparent.

Francis has removed conservative officials who once led the powerful Dicastery on Vatican doctrine and placed Fernández, an Argentine cardinal considered close to him, at its helm. Last month, Fernández and Francis issued guidance that opened a door to blessings of same-sex couples, as long as a distinction was made with the sacrament of marriage.

Officially, however, the church still teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law.” The pope’s continued outreach to the LBGTQ+ community comes after the first part of a major Vatican summit — or synod — ended in October with delegates deeply divided over outreach to gay people. The synod’s closing document failed to mention the phrase “LGBTQ+,” as used in preliminary materials and grouped the question of “sexual orientation” under “new” and “controversial” ethical issues, including artificial intelligence.

But the publication of the guidance this week was praised as a step toward inclusion by rights groups.

Sarah Kate Ellis, head of the LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization GLAAD, said in a statement that the affirmation “sends an unequivocal message to political and cultural leaders around the world to end their persecution and exclusion of transgender people,” and she praised Francis for “continuing to break down barriers.”

Francis DeBernardo, editor at the LGBTQ-focused New Ways Ministry, said welcoming transgender people more fully to Catholic sacraments is “a good step” but stressed, “that welcome needs to be expanded even more now.”

Same-sex couples cannot be married in the Catholic Church, and Catholic teaching condemns what it calls “homosexual acts” as “intrinsically immoral.” Given this context, Francis has surprised the public with statements going back to the early days of his papacy, when he said in 2013 “who am I to judge them?” in response to a question about gay priests. In January, Francis said that while he considers homosexuality a sin, it is not a crime. In October, he suggested an openness to priests blessing same-sex couples.

Benjamin Oh, co-chair of the Asia Pacific Rainbow Catholics Network, wrote in an email that the newly published document can be seen as “a sign of hope for LGBTIQA+ Catholics, that truth, justice and love can prevail,” stressing that “LGBTIQA+ people have been a part of every community in all human civilization, and that includes that of the Catholic church community.”

While the Vatican’s statement is new to most people in the community, Oh said there are already many baptized transgender Catholics, some of whom are godparents and godchildren, too. “The dichotomy of two opposing communities of LGBTIQA+ versus Catholic church is not an entirely truthful and helpful one,” Oh said.

Still, LGBTQ+ people face significant obstacles to full acceptance in the church, and churchgoers’ experiences can vary widely across dioceses and parishes, according to Human Rights Watch. The document released by the Vatican this week also appeared to raise questions about whether it is appropriate for same-sex couples living as spouses to become godparents, though it did not seem to shut the door entirely.

The U.S. Catholic bishops issued guidelines this year intended to stop Catholic hospitals from providing gender-affirming care. Some Catholic dioceses, smaller districts of the church, have enacted policies that prohibit students and workers at Catholic institutions from using the pronouns that match transgender students’ identities. One such policy in Massachusetts requires students to “conduct themselves at school in a manner consistent with their biological sex,” local media reported. Transgender teachers have been fired from Catholic schools after coming out.

Kori Pacyniak, who studies the religious experience of transgender Catholics at the University of California at Riverside, said in an email that the church’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community has been historically fraught. They cited phrases by the church “referring to ‘homosexual acts’ as ‘intrinsically disordered’ and referring to so-called ‘gender ideology’ as harmful and evil.” But “even when official teaching harms LGBTQ people, that doesn’t mean that LGBTQ people are any less Catholic or less faithful,” Pacyniak said.

Pacyniak praised Francis for “trying to guide the church into a more welcoming place,” though such efforts are “often incredibly slow-going.” Still, Pacyniak added, just because there is more work to be done “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the small steps along the way.”

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis speaks at Synod on Synodality: ‘Clericalism’ defiles the Church

Pope Francis leads the Synod on Synodality delegates in prayer on Oct. 25, 2023.

By Courtney Mares

Pope Francis denounced clericalism and called it a “scandal” to see young priests buying lace vestments at tailor shops in a strongly-worded speech to the Synod on Synodality on Wednesday.

Speaking to an assembly of hundreds of synod members on Oct. 25, the pope said that when clerics overstep their roles and “mistreat the people of God, they disfigure the face of the Church with macho and dictatorial attitudes.”

Pope Francis described the faithful people of God as “patiently and humbly enduring the scorn, mistreatment, and marginalization of institutionalized clericalism.”

“It is enough to go into the ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats, or albs and lace robes,” he added.

“Clericalism is a thorn. It is a scourge. It is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord’s bride,” he said. “It enslaves the holy, faithful people of God.”

The pope made his speech during the final week of the nearly monthlong synod assembly, where he listened to the interventions of cardinals, bishops, priests, religious sisters, and laypeople speaking about “synodality” and their experiences in the Church.

Pope Francis cited only one delegate’s intervention in his speech — that of Sister Liliana Franco, a Colombian religious sister who was one of 42 women who participated in the Amazon Synod, where she spoke at a controversial tree planting ceremony in the Vatican Gardens.

In his speech, Pope Francis praised the female intuition that led women to approach Jesus’ empty tomb after the Resurrection. He noted that many members of the Church hierarchy received their faith from their mothers and grandmothers, adding that the faith is often transmitted “in a feminine dialect.”

Much of the pope’s speech focused on “the scourge” of clericalism and worldliness, a theme that the pope has been focused on since the start of the synod.

During the first week of the synod assembly, Pope Francis gave each participant a copy of a book that he wrote titled “Santi, non mondani: La grazia di Dio ci salva dalla corruzione interiore” (“Holy, not Worldly: God’s Grace Saves us from Interior Corruption”).

The book is a compilation of a text published by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2005 called “Corruption and Sin” and a strongly-worded letter that Pope Francis wrote to all priests in the diocese of Rome on Aug. 5.

“How naturally we speak of the princes of the Church, or of episcopal promotions as getting ahead career-wise … the worldliness that mistreats God’s holy and faithful people,” Pope Francis said in his synod speech.

The pope added that he was pained to find that some parish offices offer a “price list” for sacramental services, like a “supermarket of salvation” where priests act as “mere employees of a multinational company.”

“Either the Church is the faithful people of God ‘on the way,’ — holy and sinful — or it ends up being a business offering a variety of services,” Pope Francis said.

Complete Article HERE!

Francis demonstrates support for LGBTQ ministries

— The Pope received Sr Jeannine Gramick, who was prohibited from pastoral work with LGBTQ in 1999 for “errors and ambiguities” in her ministry.

Sr Jeannine Gramick IBVM with Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, pictured outside St Peter’s in 2015.

By Brian Fraga

Pope Francis demonstrated his support for LGBTQ ministry with two significant gestures while the Synod on Synodality was discussing the Church’s approach to sexuality.

On 17 October, Francis received Sr Jeannine Gramick IBVM, the co-founder of New Ways Ministry, for a 50-minute audience in the Apostolic Palace.

“The meeting was very emotional for me,” Sr Jeannine said, praising Francis for his “humility, his love of the poor and for those shunned by society”.

Sr Jeannine co-founded New Ways Ministry – a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic ministry – in 1977 with the late Salvatorian Fr Robert Nugent.

Francis and Sr Jeannine have developed a friendly correspondence since 2021, when Francis wrote to New Ways Ministry Francis describing her as a “valiant woman.” He later sent a handwritten note congratulating her for 50 years of LGBTQ ministry.

“Meeting with Pope Francis is a great encouragement for Sr Jeannine and New Ways Ministry to continue our work in the Catholic Church,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, said in a statement.

Francis’ outreach is a marked departure from the criticisms and rebukes that New Ways Ministry received in previous years from Vatican officials and American bishops.

In 1999, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI who at the time directed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, ordered that Gramick and Nugent be prohibited from pastoral work with LGBTQ persons because of alleged “errors and ambiguities” in their ministry.

On 13 October, Francis also wrote a personal note to Stan “JR” Zerkowski, a gay Catholic man involved in national and local LGBTQ ministry in Kentucky.

Zerkowski told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he had written to Frances to tell him about his experiences and the challenges faced by many who work in LGBTQ ministry, and the Pope had replied two days later.

“For the Holy Father to say thank you for your ministry…it’s affirming the ministry,” said Zerkowski, who added that Francis’ approach to LGBTQ issues “opens the door, maybe, for discussions where discussions could not be had before”.

Complete Article HERE!