Does the Pope Sit With the Dolls?
He’s the freakin’ pope, and apparently he doesn’t feel like sharing a table with his trans guests.
Opinion by Aly Gibbs
Well, no. The pope does not sit with the dolls, unfortunately.
For those of you who don’t keep up with the goings on at the Vatican (and shame on you!), on Sunday the latest papal paterfamilias continued a yearslong tradition of hosting transgender women at the church’s annual lunch for the poor. Established by the previous pope in 2016, the World Day of the Poor is meant to “remind our communities that the poor are at the heart of all our pastoral activity,” per Pope Leo, and is typically celebrated in November.
For the church’s ninth Day of the Poor, however, the new pope decided not to invite trans women to dine at the head table where he sat, unlike Francis has for the last two years.
Was this an intentional snub? Does Pope Leo hate trans women? Well, who knows? No, really—who knows? Nobody can know with 100% certainty, and more people need to acknowledge that the pope, whatever niceties he observes with regards to queer people around the world, is still at the head of a religious body that does not support LGBTQ+ people.
The Roman Catholic Church sees homosexuality as “an intrinsic moral evil,” and while they may smile politely and suggest that homosexuality is not itself a sin, they certainly won’t welcome queer people into their ranks in any serious way. Both Francis and Leo made it clear that the church’s doctrine with regards to same sex marriage won’t change, and that the church believes only marriage between a cisgender man and woman is correct and good.
Just last Wednesday, Catholic bishops in the U.S. voted to ban lifesaving trans healthcare at Catholic hospitals nationwide. Of the vote, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota's Winona-Rochester diocese said, “With regard to the gender ideology, I think it's very important the church makes a strong statement here.”
Does that sound like compassionate inclusion to you? While the church, like any large and organized religion, is not a lockstep monolith incapable of independent thought, its leadership has always been very clear about their thoughts on gay and trans people, whether they’re Catholic or not.
Even Francis, who was remarkably progressive on a personal level (if incapable of promulgating any serious changes to Catholic doctrine), expressed intolerance towards trans people on at least one occasion. “Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,” he once said, condemning trans people like you would a virulent disease. “Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.”
So, truthfully, I do not care if Pope Leo invited trans women to sit at his table during the lunch for the poor. I don’t even care that Pope Francis used to do that, because niceties and platitudes about accepting the stranger and loving the sinner are absolutely useless in the face of structural, systemic bigotry. We’re talking about an organization that can’t stop its leadership from sexually abusing children, and even conceals that sexual abuse by relocating abusers and paying off the families who have been harmed, rather than taking steps to prevent the exploitation of children.
Why would I want their “love” anyway?
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
