VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis confronted calls to overturn the Catholic Church’s ban on gender-affirming look after transgender individuals on Saturday when he held talks with LGBTQ activists on the Vatican.
The 80-minute assembly, held privately on the guesthouse the place the pope lives, included a Catholic sister who works with LGBTQ individuals, a member of the transgender neighborhood, and a U.S. medical physician who helps run a clinic offering gender-affirming hormonal look after adults.
“I actually wished to share with Pope Francis in regards to the pleasure that I’ve being a transgender Catholic particular person,” Michael Sennett, who took half within the assembly, informed Reuters.
Sennett, a transgender man from Boston, mentioned he informed the pontiff about “the enjoyment that I get from hormone substitute remedy and the surgical procedures that I’ve had that make me really feel snug in my physique”.
The uncommon encounter was not listed on the Vatican’s official agenda of the pope’s conferences for the day.
The assembly with round a dozen LGBTQ activists comes six months after the Vatican’s doctrinal workplace firmly rejected gender-affirming care, saying it “dangers threatening the distinctive dignity the particular person has acquired from the second of conception.”
LGBTQ teams sharply criticized the Vatican doc and mentioned the doctrinal workplace didn’t search enter from transgender individuals about their experiences earlier than rejecting gender-affirming care.
“We expressed that because the church makes insurance policies on this space that it’s crucial to talk with transgender people,” mentioned Cynthia Herrick, an endocrinologist at a St. Louis, Missouri, clinic who took half within the papal assembly.
“The pope was very receptive,” mentioned Herrick. “He listened very empathetically. He additionally shared that he at all times needs to deal with the particular person, the well-being of the particular person.”
Francis, who’s 87, has been credited with main the Catholic Church into taking a extra welcoming method in the direction of the LGBTQ neighborhood, and has allowed clergymen to bless same-sex {couples} on a case-by-case foundation.
But earlier this yr he additionally used a extremely derogatory Italian time period about LGBTQ individuals, for which the Vatican apologized on his behalf.”
New Ways Ministry, a U.S.-based advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, organized Saturday’s occasion.
“The message actually is that we have to take heed to the experiences of transgender individuals,” mentioned Sister Jeannine Gramick, the group’s co-founder, who requested Francis for the encounter. The assembly “signifies that the church is coming alongside, the church is becoming a member of the fashionable period,” she mentioned.
Gramick’s work with LGBTQ Catholics has attracted the ire of Vatican and U.S. Catholic officers for many years, together with Pope Benedict XVI. But she has developed a correspondence with Francis, who first welcomed her for a gathering on the Vatican final yr.
The Vatican’s press workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about Saturday’s assembly.