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At Easter, Pope Francis invited transgender group to Vatican to receive COVID-19 vaccine
Religion News Service ^ | July 2, 2021 | Claire Giangravé

Posted on 07/02/2021 9:35:23 AM PDT by ebb tide

At Easter, Pope Francis invited transgender group to Vatican to receive COVID-19 vaccine

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The day before Easter this year, a group of transgender people came to the Vatican at the invitation of Pope Francis to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, according to an official who oversees the pope’s charitable works.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, confirmed in a phone interview that about 50 individuals arrived at the Vatican on buses on April 3 from a parish in Torvaianica, near Rome, where the Rev. Andrea Conocchia has been ministering to a transgender community for several years. On April 24, the group returned for their second shot.

It has already been reported that Francis had asked Krajewski last year to provide food and financial support to members of the community who were struggling without work due to the pandemic. But as Easter approached this year, Krajewski reached out to Conocchia, suggesting that he bring the transgender individuals under his care to the Vatican to be vaccinated.

“It was truly Easter,” Conocchia told RNS on Friday (July 2), calling the occasion “a day of life and resurrection” for his community.

The group also included volunteers working at Conocchia’s parish, as well as immigrants and refugees under the care of the Community of St. Egidio, a Catholic aid organization, as well as struggling families and divorced parents supported by the Catholic charity Caritas.


RELATED: Pope Francis urges political leaders in Lebanon to overcome partisan interests


Juan Carlos Cruz, a clerical sex abuse survivor and activist who was appointed last March by Pope Francis as a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, told RNS on Thursday (July 1) that when the two buses from Torvaianica arrived saying they had been invited to be vaccinated, Vatican officials called the pope for guidance.

“Absolutely vaccinate them!” Francis said, according to Cruz, who also said that the pontiff had the sensitivity to tell Vatican employees “to ask for their names, ask for anything they need, but do not ask them about their sex.”

The group was taken to the Paul VI Audience Hall, where they received their first dose of the vaccine.

The transgender men and women reacted with “surprise” and “emotion” to the experience of entering the Vatican for the vaccination, Conocchia said, adding that many of them are undocumented and unable to access Italy’s free health care services.

Members of a faith community from Torvaianica, Italy, including transgender individuals, volunteers and others, were invited to the Vatican to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Photos by Rev. Andrea Canocchia

Members of a faith community from Torvaianica, Italy, including transgender individuals, volunteers and others, were invited to the Vatican to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Photos by Rev. Andrea Canocchia

“They were moved to tears and felt remembered, having experienced once again and in a tangible way the closeness and tenderness of the pope’s charity,” he said.

Francis has reached out in support of the trans community before. In August 2020, he sent a letter supporting the work of Sister Mónica Astorga Cremona of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Argentina, who had opened a safe home for transexual women in the face of opposition from her diocese and the local Catholic community.  

The pope also described his meeting with a Spanish transgender man he had invited to the Vatican in 2014 after reading a letter from him describing the hostility he faced from members of the clergy because of his sexual identity.

“He wrote me a letter saying that, for him, it would be a consolation to come (see me) with his wife,” the pope said during an inflight press conference while returning from his 2015 visit to Georgia and Azerbaijan.

“Life is life and you must take things as they come,” the pope continued, stressing that each situation is unique and must be welcomed, accompanied, studied, discerned and integrated.

“This is what Jesus would do today,” Francis said.

While the pope has made several efforts to show his personal welcoming and outreach to members of the transgender community, he has also been critical of gender theory, stating that teaching it in school is a form of “cultural colonization” and calling it a “great enemy” of marriage.

For Conocchia, the closeness of Francis proves that “the church is a part of the people, whoever they are. For us they have value. They are a noun, not an adjective


TOPICS: Catholic; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: degenerates; francisschism; homofascism; notsatire; pervertpope

1 posted on 07/02/2021 9:35:23 AM PDT by ebb tide
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To: Al Hitan; DuncanWaring; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; JoeFromSidney; kalee; markomalley; ...

Ping


2 posted on 07/02/2021 9:40:23 AM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide

Our Lord cast off demons. This guy rewards them.


3 posted on 07/02/2021 9:45:30 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire. Or both.)
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To: ebb tide

Pope Hates and Kills Trannies?


4 posted on 07/02/2021 9:46:00 AM PDT by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization?)
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To: PGalt

Who knew?


5 posted on 07/02/2021 9:52:56 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: PGalt

Nah. Any vaccine is dangerous and that’s one of the reasons I rarely get a flu vaccine.

However, Italians and others are freaked out by the propaganda machine. Bergoglio letting his favored crowd of sexually confused, emotionally disturbed people get it before normal Italians is not going down well.


6 posted on 07/02/2021 9:57:01 AM PDT by livius
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To: ebb tide

What an utterly bold and prideful mocking of God.

Catholics, you have to leave the demonic pope and find a new way. Leave them to their wanton ways. I can’t believe any true Christian would call this heretic their faith leader.

God help you all.


7 posted on 07/02/2021 10:10:20 AM PDT by CaptainPhilFan ( )
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To: ebb tide; All

Catholic leader causes uproar as he voices support for ‘Big Bang’ theory

“When we read in Genesis the account of creation, we run the risk of imagining that God was a magician with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so.”

These words might sound as if they came from some controversial preacher. But they did not. They were spoken by Pope Francis to an audience from the Pontifical Academy of Science Oct. 27, according to Newsweek. In that speech, he officially affirmed that the Catholic Church believes in both evolution and the Big Bang theory, although with the addition of God into the equation.

“The Big Bang that today is considered to be the origin of the world does not contradict the creative intervention of God,” Francis said to his audience. “On the contrary, it requires it.

Francis then went into further detail about exactly how the universe was created. He said creation was not one single event, but that it “went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today.”

https://www.liberty.edu/champion/2014/11/pope-affirms-evolution/

anymore questions about this pope?


8 posted on 07/02/2021 10:22:36 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: CaptainPhilFan

Good post. See my post above. Apparently the pope doesn’t even beleive in creation now. If the above is true,, and it appears fro his own words on the issue of evolution, I beleive he is truly demonically driven


9 posted on 07/02/2021 10:24:57 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: ebb tide

Did he offer them a tour of the Papal Boudoir after they got their shots?


10 posted on 07/02/2021 10:47:30 AM PDT by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
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To: Bob434

Not one question! But as an outgrowth of his evolutionary faith he also believes extraterrestrials (fallen angels) are our Space Brothers. A further point of interest is the Vaticans truly bizarre (in an occult sense) Christmas creche. It featured a space suited figure standing close beside the creche containing a baby Jesus whose head was covered. Standing in back of the creche was an executioner, a figure from ancient times.


11 posted on 07/02/2021 10:47:31 AM PDT by spirited irish ( )
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To: ebb tide

All institutions are hollowed out and going against there original principles, what’s next is the scary part.


12 posted on 07/02/2021 10:49:45 AM PDT by Bloodandgravy (Power likes to walk on crooked legs)
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To: ebb tide

... and to engage in some light buggery!


13 posted on 07/02/2021 10:52:32 AM PDT by SgtHooper (If you remember the 60's, YOU WEREN'T THERE!)
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To: spirited irish

Yeah that was a truly weird display. Not sure if he sanctioned it, or just allowed it just ‘to be different or to ‘be more inclusive of other beleifs’ but either way, it was demonic


14 posted on 07/02/2021 11:14:30 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: ebb tide

It would have been too much to have had a strong Pope in these times it seems. The Vatican has turned into a virtue signaling globalist clown show.


15 posted on 07/02/2021 11:29:42 AM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: ebb tide

Is covid the new eucharist?


16 posted on 07/02/2021 1:40:44 PM PDT by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys)
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To: livius

Any vaccine is dangerous and that’s one of the reasons I rarely get a flu vaccine.

Agree 100%. I’ve never had a flu vaxx but my wife has. The only vaxx I had was when I was little for chicken pox IIRC. Fortunately I’ve been very healthy all of my 71 years except for a hernia 3 years ago and a brain tumor removed 2 years ago.

My wife has had some health issues. I’ve often wondered if it was the flu vaxx.

I do watch closely the labels of products and everything that I ingest.


17 posted on 07/02/2021 4:44:31 PM PDT by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization?)
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To: Slyfox
Pope at Angelus: The Eucharist is the bread of sinners not a reward of saints
18 posted on 07/02/2021 5:12:43 PM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: Slyfox

I guess the Jesuit, Bergoglio, has never heard of the hymn: Panis Angelicus.


19 posted on 07/02/2021 5:17:33 PM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide

That song always makes me cry.


20 posted on 07/02/2021 8:43:43 PM PDT by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys)
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