by The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the funeral of a transgender community leader held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday, calling the event an insult to the Catholic faith and saying it did not know the identity of the deceased, or his voice. atheism, when he agreed to host the service.
The funeral, which attracted more than 1,000 people, celebrated the life of Cecilia Gentili, an activist and actress well known for her advocacy for sex workers, transgender people and people living with HIV. She was also a self-proclaimed atheist, a theme around which she built a one-woman Off Broadway show.
Thursday’s service was an event that was probably unprecedented in Catholic history. The pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, wearing daring couture outfits and cheering as eulogies led them to pray for transgender rights and access to gender-affirming healthcare.
A praise, a video clip which was widely shared online on Friday, remembered Ms. Gentili as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,” to thunderous applause from a nearly full cathedral.
Liberal Catholics, including some St. Patrick’s parishioners, said that regardless of how some mourners behaved, the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person. But the conservatives’ response was fierce.
CatholicVote, a conservative group, called the funeral “amazing and sick” and said it was “a mockery of the Christian faith.” The Reverend Nicholas Gregoris, co-founder of the Priestly Society of St. John Henry, Cardinal Newman, called it “disgusting”, a “blasphemous and sacrilegious fiasco” and “a deplorable desecration of the most famous Catholic Church in the United States.”
On Saturday, The archdiocese issued a statement saying he shared the anger of conservative Catholics over what he called “the scandalous behavior” at Mrs. Gentili’s funeral. The Rev. Enrique Salvo, pastor of St. Patrick’s, said the church was not aware of Ms. Gentili’s background or beliefs when she agreed to host the service.
“The cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral mass for a Catholic, and had no idea that our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive manner,” the pastor said.
Funeral organizer Ceyenne Doroshow said Thursday that Gentili’s family had kept his background “secret” because they feared the archdiocese would not organize a funeral for a person it knew was transgender.
Doroshow said the family wanted Gentili’s funeral to be at St. Patrick’s because “she’s an icon, just like her.”
On Saturday, the Gentili family was outraged by the church’s criticism and accused the archdiocese of “hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred” in a statement.
The family said the LGBTQ community would continue to celebrate Ms. Gentili for how she “ministered, cared for and loved all people.”
“His heart and hands reached out to those the self-righteous church continues to belittle, oppress and punish,” the family said. “The only deception present in St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it pretends to be a welcoming place for everyone.”
The day before the funeral, the archdiocese described the service as a routine event, even after being informed by a journalist that Ms. Gentili was a transgender activist.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, said that “a funeral is one of the corporal works of mercy,” a part of the church’s Catholic teaching. has described as “a model of how we should treat everyone else, as if they were Christ in disguise.”
But on Saturday, Father Salvo said in the statement that the cathedral had celebrated a special Mass of reparation to atone for the funeral. Zwilling said the event occurred that day.
“That such a scandal occurred in ‘America’s parish church’ makes it worse,” Father Salvo said, referring to the funeral. “That it took place as Lent began, the annual 40-day struggle against the forces of sin and darkness, is a powerful reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace and mercy to which we invite this holy time. .”
New York City is home to about a dozen gay-friendly Catholic parishes that in many ways reflect the church’s softer tone on sexuality under the leadership of Pope Francis. But St. Patrick’s Cathedral, seat of the powerful archdiocese, is not one of them.
Gentili, who died Feb. 6 at age 52, had a complex relationship with religion, which he explored last year in his Off Broadway show, “Red Ink.”
After a religious education, Ms. Gentili said in an interview last yearShe came to identify as an atheist because she felt rejected by so many Christian denominations as a transgender woman.
“I used to go with my grandmother to the Baptist Church and they didn’t want me there,” she said, adding, “I went to the Catholic Church too, and they were both very traumatic experiences for me as a queer person. So I came to identify as an atheist, but I know that many trans people have been able to find a relationship with faith in spaces that include them.”
