Last week, Pope Francis invited a group of transgender “women” to dine with him at a luncheon in the Vatican as part of the Catholic Church’s observance of “World Day of the Poor.”
As reported by Fox News, the group of “women,” who are really just biological men, consisted mostly of prostitutes or migrants from Latin America. Reports say that Francis had become close with this particular group of men after coming to their aid during their collective unemployment as a result of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. Now the same group has regular VIP visits with the Pope at least once a month, and are given money, medicine, and shampoo whenever they need it.
“Before, the church was closed to us. They didn’t see us as normal people, they saw us as the devil,” said one of the men, who goes by Andrea Paola Torres Lopez.
The attendance of the controversial group was in addition to another roughly 1,200 impoverished or homeless people who were at the luncheon in the papal audience hall, complete with a full meal and dessert.
The move comes shortly after the Vatican released a controversial document stating that transgender people – mentally ill people who believe they were somehow born as the “wrong” gender – are allowed to be baptized, serve as godparents, and witness marriages, all under certain conditions.
The document, issued as a response to Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro after he asked for guidance on the issue, has been further criticized for its ambiguity, with one priest, Father Brian Graebe, who holds a doctorate in theology, describing it as “deficient.” Meanwhile, another trans activist, Carla Segovia, celebrated the document, saying that “I think the fact that Pope Francis today allows us to approach baptism with this legislation, or to perhaps take care of our best friend’s child, or of friends who ask us to be godfather or godmother, is something that makes us transgender [people] feel more human.”
These recent moves by Pope Francis seem to contradict his own past statements, where he denounced “gender ideology” as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations.” He previously described transgenderism itself as a “grave disorder,” and said that “all humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”