VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis met privately with a group of “transgender, intersex, and ally Catholics” today, in an event organized by dissident LGBT group New Ways Ministry, whose longstanding official censure by the Vatican remains in place though Francis has repeatedly signaled support for the organization.
In a late night press release Saturday (local time), New Ways Ministry (NWM) announced that they sponsored a group to meet with Francis at the Vatican today, in a discussion which lasted nearly 90 minutes.
They “urged” Francis “to move past the Church’s negative approach to gender-diverse people, and to encourage Church leaders to listen more attentively to the lives and faith of LGBTQ+ people.”
BREAKING: #PopeFrancis met with group of “transgender, intersex,” LGBT people & @NewWaysMinistry at #Vatican today for nearly 90 mins.
Among other things in mtg, they asked him to approve sex change surgery.
“The pope was very receptive,” one participant said of the mtg. pic.twitter.com/X2usYgpUiT
— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) October 12, 2024
According to Reuters – whose Vatican correspondent has close links with NWM – Francis faced “calls to overturn the Catholic Church’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people,” namely, calls to overturn the Church’s prohibition of “sex-change” surgery.
Amongst the group of 11 people were five people who shared their personal accounts with Francis, – according to NWM – including:
- Nicole Santamaria, an “intersex woman”
- Michael Sennett, a “transgender man” involved with church ministry “for many years”
- Deacon Raymond and Laurie Dever, parents of a “trasngder” girl who attempted suicide after “transitioning”
- Dr. Cynthia Herrick, a doctor who performs sex-change surgery.
NWM describes itself as “a Catholic outreach that educates and advocates for equity, inclusion, and justice for LGBTQ+ persons, equipping leaders to build bridges of dialogue within the Church and civil society.”
A former description from 2021 was that NWM “educates and advocates for justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Catholics, and reconciliation within the larger church and civil communities.”
Church’s teaching ‘ill-informed’
NWM’s executive director Francis DeBernardo said of the meeting that “we hope Pope Francis’ example of listening to LGBTQ+ people will inspire other Catholic leaders to do the same.”
“By their own admission,” he continued, “the Catholic hierarchy has issued pronouncements about gender and sexuality without first consulting the people most directly connected to these topics. Pope Francis is showing the church a new way of developing its teaching.”
The meeting, though sponsored by NWM, was arranged by Sister Jeannine Gramick – the dissident pro-LGBT nun, along with Robert Nugent, the co-founder of NWM.
Speaking after the encounter, Gramick praised Francis for his willingness to “listen to the experiences of intersex and transgender people.”
She attested that “it is only by listening to stories of these individuals, as well as the individuals who care for and about them, that the Church will be able to fully hear the voice of the Holy Spirit calling the Catholic community to break out of old, ill-informed teachings and practices.”
‘Joy’ from sex change
The meeting was requested by Gramick after the spring release of Dignitas Infinita, the Vatican document which cautiously condemned gender theory and “sex changes,” though was silent on the evil of homosexual activity.
At the time, Gramick slated the document for its approach to transgender issues. She wrote complaining to Francis, who replied saying that “transgender people must be accepted and integrated into society.”
READ: Pope Francis tells heretical pro-LGBT nun: ‘Transgender people must be integrated into society’
Francis told Gramick that the passage in Dignitas Infinita “refers not to transgender people [sic] but to gender ideology, which nullifies differences. Transgender people [sic] must be accepted and integrated into society.”
According to NWM, Francis “eagerly accepted” Gramick’s later proposal for the meeting held at the Vatican today “to hear directly from transgender and intersex Catholics and those who support them.”
The meeting “means that the Church is coming along, the Church is joining the modern era,” she attested afterwards.
Sennett, a woman who lives now as a man, told Reuters that “I really wanted to share with Pope Francis about the joy that I have being a transgender Catholic person.” According to Reuters, Sennett also told Francis about “the joy that I get from hormone replacement therapy and the surgeries that I’ve had that make me feel comfortable in my body.”
Henrick, the doctor who performs sex-change surgeries, described Francis as “very receptive.”
“He listened very empathetically,” she added. “He also shared that he always wants to focus on the person, the well-being of the person.”
Gramick cements relationship with Francis: censure remains in place
During the 2023 Synod on Synodality meeting, she was received by the pope in the first private audience granted to her and her colleagues from NWM. The papal audience was described as highlighting a “new openness” to Gramick’s work.
However, despite this friendship, the nun remains officially under Vatican censure.
Gramick has a long history of dissenting from Catholic teaching on homosexuality and abortion, and was officially silenced by the Vatican in 1999, an order which she ignored and continues to ignore.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote at the time:
The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church. For these reasons, Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS, are permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes.
Then in 2010 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) further declared that New Ways Ministry “has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church” to speak on the LGBT issue.
But Gramick came under renewed media attention in December 2021 after it was revealed that Francis had written a letter praising NWM. The pope’s comments had come in a series of letters earlier in 2021, between Gramick and DeBernardo.
Francis thanked Gramick for her “neighborly work… [your] heart, open to your neighbor.”
NWM published the pope’s letters when the Synod on Synodality team briefly removed a NWM video from the synod’s resource site. The Secretariat of the Synod subsequently apologized to the group after NWM published their correspondence with the pope, reinstated the video, and asked NWM to contribute more to the Synod on Synodality.
The pope subsequently continued his correspondence with Gramick in the midst of the media controversy over the video, praising Gramick for her “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness.”
Earlier in 2023, Gramick even argued that Francis would usher in a change on the teaching regarding homosexuality. “While some will say the church can never change its teaching, including its sexual teaching, that idea is simply wrong,” she stated, citing a 2017 speech given by Francis to defend this position.
READ: Pro-LGBT nun with papal support argues Church teaching on homosexuality will ‘inevitably change’
“Church teaching on sexuality will inevitably change,” she claimed, “but, as in the past, this change will not come quickly enough for some or without great angst for others.”