NYC Cathedral wasn’t tricked into holding trans funeral, family says

The family of a transgender activist is hitting back at claims that they duped New York’s iconic St Patrick’s Cathedral into hosting a controversial funeral for the former sex worker.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan had slammed the ‘irreverence and the disrespect’ of mourners at the February 15 funeral, where activist Cecilia Gentili was eulogized as the ‘mother of all whores’.

‘We didn’t know the background. We don’t do FBI checks on people who want to be buried,’ Dolan insisted in a radio interview this week.

‘All they know is somebody called and said, ‘Our dear friend died. We’d love to have the funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It would be a great source of consolation. She’s a Catholic,” he added.

But in a statement, Gentili’s family furiously denied that the church had been deceived and said ‘the only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.’

The family said that the funeral service had ‘brought precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.’

Similarly, the group Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society said in a statement: ‘The current narrative from St. Patrick’s Cathedral leadership that they were manipulated by funeral organizers of the identity of Ms. Gentili is simply not true.’

‘Funeral organizers advised cathedral staff to look up Cecilia Gentili, her work, and the community she served. To now place responsibility on the funeral organizers to have affirmatively disclosed the gender identity of their loved one is imposing a burden upon the mourners that would not be expected of a non-transgender person,’ they added.

Videos of Gentili’s funeral show an audience of more than 1,000  applauding, singing and offering praise of her stature as a leading light of the city’s LGBTQ+ community.

During one eulogy that was widely circulated on social media, Gentili was celebrated as ‘Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,’ and at one point the lyrics of ‘Ave Maria’ were changed to ‘Ave Cecilia’.

Dolan said that the funeral service was cut short, with no Mass as originally planned, after cathedral workers observed the tenor of the proceedings.

The US conference of Catholic bishops rejects the concept of gender transition, though Pope Francis recently cleared the path for transgender adults to be baptized under certain conditions.

In a written statement released Saturday, the Rev. Enrique Salvo, pastor of Saint Patrick’s, thanked those who ‘share our outrage over the scandalous behavior’ at the funeral.

‘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,’ Father Enrique Salvo said in a statement.

‘That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse.

‘That it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty–day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season invites us.’

Gentili was known as a leading advocate for other transgender people, as well as sex workers and people with HIV.

A former sex worker who suffered addiction and was jailed at Rikers Island, Gentili became a transgender health program coordinator, a nonprofit policy director for an established gay men’s health organization, GMHC, and a lobbyist for health equality and anti-discrimination legislation, among other advocacy work.

Gentili founded the COIN Clinic, short for Cecilia’s Occupational Inclusion Network, a free health program for sex workers through the Callen-Lorde community health organization in New York.

‘New York’s LGBTQ+ community has lost a champion in trans icon Cecilia Gentili,’ New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X, formerly Twitter, following Gentili’s death.

Just days before her death Gentili was successful in winning a $540,000 grant from the CDC for her a trans outreach program aimed at combating HIV transmission within the community.

Funeral organizer Ceyenne Doroshow said she chose St Patrick’s for the funeral on February 15 because ‘it is an icon, just like her.’

The pews were packed with around 1,000 mourners, many dressed in revealing outfits including one with a feather boa made of $100 bills.

A picture near the altar showed a haloed Gentili surrounded by the Spanish words for ‘transvestite,’ ‘whore,’ ‘blessed’ and ‘mother’ above the text of Psalm 25.

Actor Billy Porter began the ‘political theatre’ with a performance of ‘This Day’, before Father Edward Dougherty delivered the service, declaring that ‘Cecilia died with Christ’.

‘This great whore, St Cecelia, mother of all whores,’ announced one mourner from the pulpit.

‘Today we say we see you soon and that you will give us the strength, the courage to continue your legacy, to continue the challenges ahead.’

A priest singing ‘Ave Maria’ found himself unexpectedly accompanied by another mourner singing ‘Ave Cecilia’ as they danced down aisles, twirling a red scarf.

New York City hosts at least ten gay-friendly Catholic parishes – but St Patrick’s Cathedral isn’t one of them.

Father Dougherty has previously written fondly of his first ministry in Tanzania where gay people face life imprisonment and legislators have pushed to make a gay sex a capital offense.

Gentili who faced abuse from her family and neighbors after coming out as gay at 12 became a US citizen in September 2022 and released a book called Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, that year.

She also worked as a stand-up comedian and appeared in the critically acclaimed FX series ‘Pose’, in which she played Miss Orlando, a New York City woman who provided discounted plastic surgery.

Organizers believe hers may have been the first ever funeral service for an openly trans person at the 19th-century cathedral.