VATICAN CITY — A group of 48 transgender women attended a major Vatican event on Sunday with Pope Leo XIV, continuing a tradition that began under his predecessor of inviting members of the LGBTQ+ community to the church’s annual “lunch for the poor.”
Unlike in past years, however, no trans women were seated at the pope’s main table.
The fact that they were present at all, the women said, suggested a willingness to keep open a door unlocked by Pope Francis, the late pontiff who revolutionized relations between LGBTQ+ Catholics and the world’s largest Christian faith.
“That he’d mingle, that he [sat] close to [us], that’s a good sign, right?” said Alessia Nobile, a trans woman and Italian author who attended the lunch. She said she managed to hand Leo a letter on behalf of the “trans community,” to which he simply “smiled.”
Since Leo’s election, LGBTQ+ Catholics and their supporters have closely watched his words, seeking to glean his stance on one of the most divisive issues facing the church and its 1.4 billion devotees. Viewed by observers as a more restrained figure than Francis, he has been circumspect.
In 2012, Leo criticized depictions of homosexuality in pop culture at a Vatican forum. In a recent book based on interviews with Leo, the new American pope described the LGBTQ+ question as “highly polarizing within the church” and noted that “for many people” beyond the West, “that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another.”
However, like Francis, he said that he will welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics to the church because they are either “a son or daughter of God.”
In September, Leo privately authorized the saying of a special Mass for a group of more than 1,450 pilgrims attending a historic LGBTQ+ event for the Vatican’s 2025 jubilee, though he did not make any public reference to it. Leo has also personally met with advocates of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church.
Attendees at the Vatican lunch on Sunday numbered 1,300, with migrants, disabled people, those who are homeless and other guests gathered inside the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
Leo entered the cavernous room as an orchestra struck up a rendition of “O Sole Mio.” One trans woman handed him an image of the Madonna as he entered. He accepted it, moving to his table and addressing the crowd.
He welcomed the guests to “this lunch so strongly backed by our much beloved Pope Francis.” He blessed the attendees.
“Buon appetito,” he said, before sitting down to a meal of lasagna and chicken cutlets.
Trans women — many of whom had also met with Francis at dozens of papal audiences — began attending the Vatican’s annual lunch for the poor in 2023. That year, as well as in 2024, two members of the group were selected to dine at Francis’s head table. The late pope cordially conversed with the women, most of them fellow Latin Americans living in Torvaianica, a seaside town near Rome.
This time, all the trans women ate at separate tables. Like other participants at the large and free-flowing event, many of the women were unable to greet him personally or offer him handwritten letters.
“It went well, there was a fraternal and a joyful atmosphere,” said the Rev. Andrea Conocchia, a liberal Catholic priest who ministers to transgender women in Torvaianica. “We weren’t able to meet the pope,” he added, but they still “had us sit at tables very, very close to the pope.”
Two people familiar with the organization of the event said that head table tickets had not been provided to the trans women this year without explanation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
But in an interview with The Washington Post, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Vatican’s point person for the event, rejected any suggestion of an intentional snub. He said the tickets for the pope’s table this year had been handed out randomly to poor parishioners who had attended an earlier Mass, and that the trans women had arrived late to the event.
Their attendance, he said, should not be overinterpreted.
“The church is open to everyone,” said Krajewski. “It’s not about [Leo] meaning to carry on this outreach. They came because they’re an integral part of the church, that is all.”
Marcella Di Marco, a 52 year old trans woman, said there was some disappointment that members of the group were not included at the pope’s table this year. “But we still received a sense that the church is not going to close the door that it opened,” she said. “Pope Leo is different from Francis, but he knows we have hard lives and I believe his heart is open to us.”
Homosexuality has long been condemned by the Catholic church, which defines it as “intrinsically disordered.” Francis, however, embarked on historic pastoral outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics.
He remained strongly opposed to allowing same-sex couples to enter into the Catholic sacrament of marriage, and described “gender theory” as tantamount to “nuclear weapons.” But he publicly backed secular civil unions, and explicitly authorized short blessings of individuals in same-sex couples. Late in his papacy, the Vatican also clarified that transgender people can serve as godparents and receive baptism.
Starting in 2022, groups of trans women were invited to participate in papal audiences, often in the front row so they could personally greet the pope. He would ultimately meet with more than 100 transgender people, mostly women, and many of them current or former Latin American sex workers living in Italy.
Under Leo, that tradition has not yet continued.
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