"How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers"

[GrumpyPanda]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/05/pope-francis-transgender-sex-workers/

archive.ph/lj8qo

Mostly fluffy details about the TW (they make empanadas!). But there's also this little gem:

She was sitting with Don Andrea, Sister Geneviève and a trans man who wanted to be a priest. When Francis arrived, pushed by aides in his wheelchair, he made his way along the front row, grasping hands and sharing words with each guest.
To the trans man, he was kind, if noncommittal, opening no door, nor closing one. “Keep talking to Jesus, because that’s the safe way forward,” he said.

Not sure what the problem is?

I'm not sure what your point is

The Pope has spoken out against gender ideology, and repeated his criticisms recently. Here he’s just being kind to some trans-identifying prostitutes, who have been living pretty miserable lives.

I notice, along with OP I think, that he offers no chance of a woman becoming a priest, even if she’s calling herself a man. That’s going too far!

But to be fair to the Pope, he’s always been clear that humans can’t change sex. He’s just being nice.

Now come on Francis, how about being nicer to women in general? You could lift millions of women out of poverty and ill-health just by saying contraception is a gift from God.

That's my take too, Ofcourseshecan, the trans people in question seem to have had hard lives and are down on their luck, a lifetime away from the entitled TRAs we complain about regularly here. As far as the pope is concerned they probably come under the heading of 'the least of my brethren'.
It all reminds me of Caravaggio's 'Supper at Emmaus' -

This. 100%.

Just because I don’t believe a man can change into a woman, or vice versa, doesn’t mean I automatically hate transgender people and wish them ill. There is no reason to be rude to them and when I campaign to keep them out of Women’s spaces, I do so with common sense, science and reason. Not name calling.

The pope was nice to a 57 year old sex worker who has HIV and cancer.

This isn't an FWR issue as far as I can see.

I would hope everyone on this board could be perfectly pleasant to a random trans person and I would very strongly expect the pope could! Amazing anyone would think otherwise - what did you want him to do, spit at them?? Trans rights are human rights is absolutely true, it doesn’t in any way mean a male person can invade women’s spaces but everyone is human and deserves to be treated that way. They weren’t holding a kill a terf sign, they were just existing. As everyone should be able to do.

I'm not sure what else anyone would expect, the Catholic Church has always done work for people who are in some way vulnerable, even if they are morally questionable from their POV, or have brought on their own problems. They do lots of work with prisoners for example, and not just the ones that are thought to be possibly innocent or victims of bad circumstances. The oneseveryone thinks are really bad and feels good about hating.

Why would he be less thoughtful towards these unfortunate people?

Particularly the South American theological/political tradition Francis came out of is focused on this kind of service work.

Completely derailing but I really shouldn't be on my phone so late.

I realised I must be tired when I had a mental image of the Pope being pushed around in a wheelbarrow.

I thought that was a very strange thing to do and had to go back and reread the post. 😔

I think a lot of people either don’t understand that or have not seen that in the Church before.