A pro-Catholic advocacy organization is calling on New York authorities to investigate transgender activists for alleged hate crimes committed against St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a recent funeral for a trans actor and prostitute.
In letters this week, Catholic Vote president Brian Burch demanded that New York attorney general Letitia James and district attorney Alvin Bragg investigate trans activists who “profaned” the holy cathedral and “mocked the Catholic religion” during a funeral for Cecilia Gentili, a transgender activist, prostitute, and actor from Argentina.
“Video footage shows that transgender activists intentionally used deception to obtain permission to enter St. Patrick’s and the facts show that access was used to desecrate that sacred space and mock Catholic faith and morals,” the letters say. “The outrageous sacrilege perpetrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is indeed a hate crime.”
Under New York law, it is a hate crime to select a victim at least in part due to religion, among other traits. It is also a hate crime to select a victim of criminal trespassing on the basis of religion. New York courts have previously held that people who gain access to a property through deception can be liable for criminal trespass.
On February 15, St. Patrick’s Cathedral hosted a funeral for Gentili, who was a baptized Catholic, but described attending Catholic services as “traumatic” and later came to identify as an atheist. According to a statement by the LGBTQ-advocacy organization Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society, Gentili was “reexamining” a “relationship with the church” over the past year and had a “very complicated” but “deep love for God.”
The service was not a typical Catholic funeral.
“Over 1,000 mourners, several hundred of whom were transgender, arrived in daring outfits — glittery miniskirts and halter tops, fishnet stockings, sumptuous fur stoles and at least one boa sewed from what appeared to be $100 bills,” the New York Times reported. “Mass cards and 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 23.”
Gentili was eulogized in Spanish as, “This whore. This great whore. St. Cecilia, Mother of all Whores!” An attendee interrupted a solo performance of “Ave Maria” by singing “Ave Cecilia” and proceeded to twirl around the casket and down the aisle. The service included a call to prayer for the LGBTQ community to have “access to life-affirming health care” — likely meaning gender-related treatments — and “secure housing.”
The priests decided at the beginning of the service to conduct a funeral, instead of the planned funeral Mass, a more formal service that includes the Eucharist and Holy Communion.
“I applaud our priests who made a quick decision that, uh-oh, with behavior like this we can’t do a Mass,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said on his podcast. “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.”
Reverend Enrique Salvo, the rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, issued a statement on Saturday in response to the funeral and confirmed offering a Mass of Reparation:
Thanks to so many who have let us know they share our outrage over the scandalous behavior at a funeral here at St. Patrick’s Cathedral earlier this week. 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. 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.
At the Cardinal’s directive, we have offered an appropriate Mass of Reparation.
The New York Times wrote that a reporter had informed St. Patrick’s Cathedral before the funeral that Gentili identified as transgender. But Dolan affirmed Salvo’s statement that the funeral organizers had not given the church sufficient information.
“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,’” Dolan said.
He added that the church didn’t “know the background” of Gentili and “we don’t do FBI checks on people who want to be buried.”
The funeral’s organizer, Ceyenne Doroshow, told the New York Times that St. Patrick’s Cathedral had not been told Gentili was transgender out of fear that the church would deny permission to host the funeral.
“I kind of kept it under wraps,” Doroshow said. Doroshow is a self-identified “transgender woman” who founded and directs Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (GLITS), an organization dedicated to the “transgender community members and the sex worker community.”
“Here’s a little secret, y’all,” Doroshow said the night before the funeral, according to a video recording. “They still don’t know [Gentili] is trans.”
Doroshow now states that “I wasn’t deceptive” and says that the cathedral never asked for information about Gentili’s gender identity. Doroshow also claims to have told St. Patrick’s Cathedral that Gentili was a “sex worker advocate, an icon and an activist,” and instructed the church to “perform an internet search to see that [Gentili] exemplified the iconic religious establishments directive to minister to all.”
Doroshow and Gentili’s family are now accusing St. Patrick’s Cathedral of deception.
Gentili’s family said the funeral “brought precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred,” adding that “the only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.”
“This act of deception is coming from the archdiocese,” Doroshow said, adding that “you’re preaching hate, you’re teaching people to hate, you have spewed hate.”
Doroshow is demanding that St. Patrick’s Cathedral issue “a very transparent apology” for “the decades of degradation and hate you have put on our community.”
Doroshow’s organization, GLITS, is arguing that the priests “seemingly violated Catholic Canon Law” by changing the service from a funeral mass to a funeral service.
