The cheering began shortly after the priest opened the funeral.
Bold-colored outfits dotted the hundreds of people in the pews of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for transgender advocate and avowed atheist Cecilia Gentili’s funeral Thursday.
“Welcome to St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” said Edward Dougherty, the priest presiding over the event at the Manhattan church. “Except on Easter Sunday, we don’t [usually] have a crowd that is this well turned out.”
As Dougherty chuckled into the mic, Gentili’s family, friends and a few celebrities applauded, with some chanting “Cecilia.” They were celebrating a woman who advocated for sex workers, immigrants and people living with HIV. The funeral was punctuated with cheers for a trans woman who exemplified their struggle for safety and acceptance and speakers prayed for transgender rights and access to gender affirming care.
But two days later, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York said it was outraged “over the scandalous behavior” at the funeral and said it had been deceived about the identity of Gentili, 52.
“The Cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way,” Enrique Salvo, the leader of St. Patrick’s, said in a statement.
New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told The Washington Post that Salvo’s statement was about “the behavior of some of those in attendance at the funeral — including comments like ‘the mother of all whores’ or changing the words of the ‘Ave Maria,’ a sacred hymn, to ‘Ave Cecilia’ to cite just two examples.”
Ceyenne Doroshow, who helped organize the funeral, said the audience made some “bold choices” at the ceremony.
Doroshow said a woman in the audience started singing over a rendition of “Ave Maria,” before dancing in the aisle.
Doroshow guided the young woman to stop, but she had already received an applause.
“Look, it’s an unprecedented funeral for an unprecedented icon,” said Doroshow, an advocate for transgender sex workers and friend of Gentili’s for over 20 years.
Another longtime friend and funeral organizer, Katia Perea, said nothing in Thursday’s ceremony was meant to mock St. Patrick’s.
“There was no incident when anyone said anything disrespectful about the church or God or Jesus,” said Perea, who spoke at the funeral.
But Zwilling said one speaker crossed the line by referring to Gentili as “the mother of all whores,” a characterization the crowd applauded.
“Whore was used as an identifier for Gentili because she was a sex-worker advocate,” Perea said. “The word was used in complete acceptance of that identity, as someone to be loved, respected and deserving of the same rights as anyone else.”
Gentili tried to decriminalize sex work because its social stigma led to violence against sex workers and devalued them, Perea said.
Doroshow said Gentili was “magic for our community, and that’s why I picked a place as iconic as St Patrick’s.” But there were more reasons to choose the cathedral.
“The immediate reason was her ongoing confliction with the church and how the church perceives and treats us as a people,” Doroshow said. “And for somebody who had been fighting church, religion and state almost her whole life, it was fitting, for me, to make that happen.”
Zwilling, the archdiocese spokesman, said the church did not take issue with Gentili’s gender identity, but “the organizers, by their own admission, attempted to deceive the cathedral staff” about it.
When Doroshow first called the church, it asked for more information about Gentili.
“I said she is a sex worker advocate, an icon and an activist,” Doroshow said. “And then I told them to Google her, because she’s quite famous.”
At no point did the church ask about Gentili’s gender identity or sexuality, Doroshow said, and at no point was it offered to them. “If a cisgender person’s family organizes their funeral, does their family tell the church that they were cis?” Doroshow said. “If not, why is that being asked of us?”
Gentili’s family pushed back on the archdiocese’s statement, saying the funeral brought “precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.”
“Cecilia Gentili’s funeral … was a reflection of the love she had for her community and a testament to the impact of her tireless advocacy,” the statement continued. “The only deception present at St Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.”
Gentili’s friends described her to The Post as a “humble and admirable leader.”
“When I first met her, I wondered if this is how people felt when they first met Dr. King,” Perea said. “I would follow her anywhere. She was always the smartest and funniest person in any room.”
Born in Argentina, Gentili was a self-professed atheist who had been “reexamining my relationship with religion” as part of a Narcotics Anonymous program.
“Religion is such a complicated issue for most queer and trans people,” she told Interview magazine last year. “I used to go with my grandmother to the Baptist church, and they didn’t want me there. They made it very clear. I used to go to the Catholic church, too, and both were such traumatic experiences for me as a queer person. So I came to identify as an atheist, but I know that so many trans people have been able to find a relationship with faith in spaces that include them.”
Her cause of death has not been revealed.
For Doroshow, the funeral was important because “when thousands of people showed up, it showed the magnitude of love for Cecilia and set a precedent that our community will stand strong together.”
Catholic liberals praised the church for hosting the service for a transgender woman. Before the funeral, Zwilling told the New York Times that “a funeral is one of the corporal works of mercy,” which is “a model for how we should treat all others, as if they were Christ in disguise.”
Conservative group CatholicVote described the funeral as “unbelievable and sick,” and said it was “a mockery of the Christian faith.” Nicholas Gregoris, a co-founder of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, called it “revolting,” a “blasphemous & sacrilegious fiasco” and “a deplorable desecration of America’s most famous Catholic Church.”
The archdiocese conducted a ceremonial blessing for the cathedral after Gentili’s funeral, Salvo’s Saturday statement said. A church in Brooklyn led a similar ceremony to restore the sanctity of the church and repair harm after a pop singer recorded a “sexually provocative” video last year, according to the Catholic Review.
In November, the Vatican released guidance saying transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and witness weddings in the Roman Catholic Church, under certain circumstances. The policy, which responds to questions from a bishop in Brazil, reflects a continued opening by Pope Francis to the LBGTQ+ community.
Before the funeral, Doroshow was concerned about Gentili looking perfect on the day, but now concerns have shifted.
“When all this is said and done, we need to have better relationships and more conversations with the Catholic Church,” Doroshow said. “If they want to help us, we need burial funds and sustainability, not condemnation.”
Shane O’Neill contributed to this report.
