Pope Francis met last week with a group of LGBTQ activists calling for a reversal of the Catholic Church’s opposition to gender-affirming care. Among those meeting with the Pope was Michael Sennet, a transgender man from Boston.
“I really wanted to share with Pope Francis about the joy that I have being a transgender Catholic person,” Sennett told Reuters, adding that he spoke to the pontiff about “the joy that I get from hormone replacement therapy and the surgeries that I’ve had that make me feel comfortable in my body.”
According to Reuters:
The 80-minute meeting, held privately at the guesthouse where the pope lives, included a Catholic sister who works with LGBTQ people, a member of the transgender community, and a U.S. medical doctor who helps run a clinic providing gender-affirming hormonal care for adults. …
The meeting with around a dozen LGBT activists comes six months after the Vatican’s doctrinal office [“firmly rejected”] gender-affirming care, saying it “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
LGBTQ groups sharply criticized the Vatican document and said the doctrinal office did not seek input from transgender people about their experiences before rejecting gender-affirming care.
Francis, who is 87, has been credited with leading the Catholic Church into taking a more welcoming approach towards the LGBTQ community, and has allowed priests to bless same-sex couples on “a case-by-case basis.”
But earlier this year he also “used” a highly derogatory Italian term about LGBTQ people, for which the Vatican apologised “on his behalf.” …
New Ways Ministry, a U.S.-based advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, organised Saturday’s event.
“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 asked Francis for the encounter. The meeting “means that the church is coming along, the church is joining the modern era,” she said.
Read the complete Reuters story here.
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