The funeral of a renowned transgender activist in a New York City cathedral has been denounced by a senior church official, who called the mass a scandal within one of the pre-eminent houses of worship in American Catholicism.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, which was held in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and drew a large audience on Thursday.
Here’s what we know.
Who was Cecilia Gentili?
Argentinian-born Cecilia 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 previously jailed at New York’s Rikers Island, Gentili became a transgender health program coordinator, a nonprofit policy director for gay men’s health organisation 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 a community health organisation in New York.
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 her autobiographical show Red Ink, touching on topics including her childhood in Argentina and lack of religious faith.
A post on her Instagram account announced her death on February 6, at the age of 52. Her cause of death has not been revealed.
Posting on social media platform X following Gentili’s death, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the city’s LGBTQI community had “lost a champion”.
US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also honoured Gentili on the floor of the US House of Representatives.
“Our community will continue to remember Cecilia as an unwavering leader in the fight for equality,” she said.
What happened at Gentili’s funeral?
Gentili’s funeral was held on Thursday, February 15, at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the New York borough of Manhattan. It is believed to be the first time St Patrick’s Cathedral has held a funeral mass for a transgender person.
The funeral’s organiser, Ceyenne Doroshow, told the New York Times that Gentili’s family had kept her background “under wraps” from the church, out of fear it would not host a funeral for a transgender person.
She reportedly said Gentili’s family wanted her funeral to be at St Patrick’s because “it is an icon, just like her”.
St Patrick’s is an architectural and tourist landmark that has been the site of funerals for numerous prominent New Yorkers, including assassinated US senator Robert F. Kennedy, baseball legend Babe Ruth and emergency responders who died in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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 LGBTQI community.
During one eulogy that was widely circulated on social media, Gentili was celebrated as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores”, to cheers from many of the mourners in attendance.
Gentili’s fellow Pose actor Billy Porter sang during the funeral. In a statement before the song, Porter called Gentili a leader among “an entire community of people who transformed my life forever”.
“Grief is singular, it’s individual. Please know that however you grieve is what’s right,” Porter said.
“There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. But just make sure that you do, you allow yourself to do that, so that we can get to the other side of something that feels a little bit like grace.”
What was the church’s response?
In a written statement released on Saturday, St Patrick’s pastor Reverend Enrique Salvo said the church was “outraged” over what he called “scandalous behaviour” at Gentili’s 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,” he said.
Mr Salvo called the behaviour 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”.
He said a mass of reparation had been offered at the direction of Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York.
Some parishioners at St Patrick’s told the New York Times that the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person, but some conservative groups were not happy.
One of them, CatholicVote, also condemned Porter’s performance at the funeral, describing it as a mockery of the “Our Father” prayer.
“This is just unbelievable and sick,” the group said on X.
In a statement, Gentili’s family denied that St Patrick’s had been deceived, but 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.
AP/ABC
