What to Know
- St. Patrick’s Cathedral hosted a funeral service last week for Cecilia Gentili, a 52-year-old Catholic who was known as a leading advocate for transgender people, sex workers and people with HIV
- In a written statement, the Rev. Enrique Salvo, pastor of St. Patrick’s, thanked people he said had informed the church that they “share our outrage over the scandalous behavior” at the funeral
- Gentili’s family denied the church had been deceived and said the gathering “brought precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.”
Timothy Cardinal Dolan on Tuesday lauded St. Patrick’s Cathedral officiants who curtailed a funeral where more than 1,000 people had gathered to celebrate the life of Cecilia Gentili, a 52-year-old Catholic who, apparently unbeknownst to the church before the service, was also a renowned transgender activist.
Meanwhile, Gentili’s family is demanding a public explanation from St. Patrick’s for turning what they say was an agreed-upon funeral Mass into a truncated remembrance. They also want a public apology from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which condemned the funeral after the fact.
Supporters planned to rally on the steps of City Hall later Wednesday.
Gentili was known as a leading advocate for other transgender people, as well as sex workers and people with HIV. A post on her Instagram account announced her death on Feb. 6 at age 52. Her funeral was held Thursday at St. Patrick’s, attended by roughly 1,400 people, supporters say. St. Patrick’s pastor claimed the church knew only it was hosting a service for a Catholic and that it didn’t know she was transgender, calling the case a scandal.
“We didn’t know the background. We don’t do FBI checks on people who want to be buried,” Cardinal Dolan said on XiriusXM a day ago. “So anyway, then, of course, once the funeral started, is when the trouble started because of the irreverence and the disrespect of the big crowd that was there. That was very, very sad. And again, I applaud our priests who made a quick decision that, uh-oh, with behavior like this we can’t do a Mass. We’ll do the Liturgy of the Word, which is the readings, and the sermon and the prayers, the petition, and the Our Father, and then we’ll stop it. The Mass is not going to go on. Bravo for our cathedral people who knew nothing about this that was coming up.”
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Gentili supporters say the service ended an hour earlier than had been scheduled. They also deny any deceptive tactics, saying they encouraged church officials to look into her background and community service prior to the funeral. Supporters say it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the family to proactively affirm her gender identity.
“In the spirit of Cecilia’s love and care, the community she served requests a public apology to heal from the pain caused to all those who have witnessed what has transpired in the days since Cecilia’s beautiful homegoing service,” representatives said in a statement. “We hoped for better as we wanted to continue Cecilia’s healing journey with the faith of her childhood. Under the direction of Pope Francis’ call for a more open and inclusive church, we hope that LGBTQ+ parishioners and mourners won’t be left to feel abandoned yet again by the faith that they still want to call home.”
Videos of Gentili’s funeral show an estimated audience of more than 1,000 celebrants, including transgender people and other friends and supporters chanting her name, 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.”
The pastor called the behavior at the Mass a “scandal” and a “potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season (of Lent) invites us.”
In a statement, Gentili’s family denied that the church had been deceived and said the gathering “brought precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.”
“The only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all,” the family said.
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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.
Gentili acted in the FX television series “Pose,” about the underground ballroom dance scene in the 1980s and 1990s. She also performed two one-woman stage shows.
“I am an atheist, but I am always asking God for things,” Gentili said in “Red Ink,” her autobiographical show touching on topics including her childhood in Argentina and lack of religious faith.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a Manhattan architectural and tourist landmark, has been the site of funerals for numerous prominent New Yorkers including Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Babe Ruth and emergency responders who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
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