He was condemned by the Archdiocese of New York on funeral of a trans activist, Cecilia Giudiciwhich was celebrated last Thursday in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The parish priest Enrique Salvo reported the protests of Catholic and traditionalist groups and states that they only knew that “family and friends had requested a funeral mass for a Catholic. We had no idea that our welcome and prayers would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceitful way.”
The funeral in question is that of the activist Cecilia Giudici, a former prostitute and activist for the rights of trans people and AIDS sufferers, who had attracted many peoplemany of whom rarely frequented the cathedral, so much so that the celebrant, Edward Dougherty, commented during the homily that “We haven’t seen so many people since Easter”.
Cheyenne Doroshow – author and activist for the rights of transgender people of color – organized the funeral and said that she had chosen the cathedral “because it is an icon, like she was”, but added that she had not mentioned that Cecilia was transgender . In fact, in New York there are about ten parishes that have opened to gays, but the cathedral is not one of them.
Many liberal Catholics applauded at the woman’s funeral, including Father James Martin – a well-known Jesuit who fights for a church open to gays – and stated “that celebrating the funeral of a trans woman at St. Patrick was a powerful signal that LGBTQ people they are part of the Church like anyone else.” The conservatives, however, have a completely different idea and defined the funeral as “nauseating and a mockery of the Catholic Church”.
The mass, in fact, is was unprecedented in the history of the church: the funeral of an atheist woman was celebrated, with the audience of trans people in miniskirts, sequins and ostrich boas who publicly prayed for the recognition of the rights of people like them. Only a few decades ago, St. Patrick’s Cathedral was at the center of a conflict between the Catholic hierarchies and the activists who, on the occasion of the 1989 protest, at the height of the AIDS crisis, had chained themselves to the benches or had fake dead.