The trans women who sat with Pope Francis: ‘He told me not to lose faith, because we are all equal in the eyes of God’

The trans women who sat with Pope Francis: ‘He told me not to lose faith, because we are all equal in the eyes of God’ The group of transgender women who met the late pontiff on a number of occasions mourn his loss and hope that the Church will continue to welcome them as he did On March 11, 2020, three days after all the parishes in Italy were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Don Andrea looked out onto the street and saw a queue of people circling his church in Torvaianica, a sleepy beach town on the outskirts of Rome. Many of them were transsexuals who prostitute themselves and put their lives at risk every day at the edge of the pine forests close by. They no longer had clients.

They had no money for food or medicine. Andrea Conocchia, one of those hands-on priests that the Pope particularly approved of, didn’t even know those girls were transsexuals . “I had never had contact with any of them,” he explains.



He called the Vatican and asked for help and was sent money and food immediately. On April 24, 2025, three of those trans women, the Colombians Yuliana and Diana and the Uruguayan Marcela, shared a table in one of the small rooms of the Beata Virgen Inmaculada parish. All of them are Latin American migrants and have spent years on the street.

Besides a sharp sense of humor, it could be said that they also share a friendship with Pope Francis , whom they met on four occasions over the past three years. And they are upset by his death. “The first time I saw him, on April 27, 2022, I told him that I had lost my faith.

He said I should not let that happen, because we are all equal in the eyes of God,” says Marcela. The pasts of these three women, as well as a Peruvian called Minerva, are not dissimilar. All three fled Latin America, where they were subject to violence, abuse, and discrimination.

Diana was shot three times by an uncle, she says, lifting up her shirt and showing the scar that runs the length of her belly. Marcela was escaping police repression and spent three years in Paris before coming to Rome. And Yuliana grew up in a Bogotá where the transition process she was about to begin was not accepted.

In Italy, everything was going relatively well, until the pandemic arrived. “A friend told me about the parish priest who was talking to the Pope about helping the LGBTQ+ community and I decided to come,” explains Yuliana, who wears her hair tied back with a silky blue scarf and dark glasses. With the support of the Vatican, the parish helped all those who needed it.

That group of trans women, the first four who had come for help, asked the priest to personally thank the Pope, and wrote him letters. “I didn’t know him personally,” says Father Andrea. So the trans women met him through the nun Geneviève Jeanningros, now 82, who knew Francis and who was then living in a caravan among fairground and circus workers.

She wrote to the pontiff and he promptly replied: “I don’t want just four to come, I want all of them. All of them.” A woman who had worked for 56 years helping the poor, prostitutes and transsexuals working the streets, and preaching among circus people, Geneviève Jeanningros gave the green light.

“That woman is an angel,” Yuliana says. Asked at the time about her involvement, the nun was puzzled. “I don’t understand why this is generating so much attention,” she told Reuters.

“It’s ordinary work for the Church, it’s normal. Everything is closed, they have no resources, and they went to their pastor. They couldn’t have gone to a politician or a parliamentarian because they don’t have papers.

And the pastor came to us.” According to the Transsexual Identity Movement (MIT), an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 trans migrants engaged in prostitution live in Italy, mostly Latin Americans from countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, concentrated in the outskirts of large cities such as Rome, Milan, and Bologna. With the express authorization of Pope Francis, the Vatican was already sponsoring several shelters for abused transsexual women in Argentina, which it supported spiritually and financially.

But the assistance in Rome began at that time and the trans women subsequently met Pope Francis at Wednesday audiences. “Some collaborators would turn away when we arrived. He was always affable and funny, he loved to joke,” Marcela recalls.

Now, however, they fear that things will change again. “The Church has opened up enormously with Francis and many of us who didn’t have a place have found it. We hope that after the conclave, whoever the new pope is , he will have the humility to continue walking with us and not undo the road we have traveled,” Marcela says.

As in the case of prisoners whose feet he washed every Easter Thursday, even this year, four days before he died, Pope Francis was silently involved in the lives of these women. On his office desk he had long kept a photo of Naomi Cabral, an Argentinian transsexual who was strangled by a client in a hotel room near Torvaianica. Francis did not want to forget the dangers many of them face.

“Many of our friends have died since then. Some time ago Lili, a Peruvian colleague, was also murdered,” Marcela says. They stuck a screwdriver in the back of her head and abandoned her in the pine forest where some 40 trans women work.

“We don’t want her to be forgotten.” On Saturday, a group chosen by Pope Francis, which includes migrants, trans people and six prisoners who have obtained special permission to leave prison, will receive the coffin of Pope Francis in the atrium of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he has chosen to be buried. It is the farewell he wanted.

On Monday, the trans women of Torvaianica will celebrate a Mass with Don Andrea in honor of their friend Francis. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción? Si continúas leyendo en este dispositivo, no se podrá leer en el otro. ¿Por qué estás viendo esto? Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo y solo puedes acceder a EL PAÍS desde un dispositivo a la vez.

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