BUT BUT SHE WAS A CISGENDER WOMAN you might think.

yet you wouldn't bat an eye if i told you that the first women disappeared by las dictaduras were not just transgender women but transgender women prostitutes. and not just transgender women prostitutes but BLACK, ORIGINARIA & NON-WHITE LOOKING transgender women prostitutes.

Black, Native & non-white-heteronormative presenting transgender women are the canaries in the fascist coal mines. ALWAYS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trans-women-testify-rape-torture-argentina-dictatorship-rcna88824

…🧵

and this is where the influence of Esther Ballestero comes into place, and let’s fast forward to his papacy.

it is exactly because Jorge Bergoglio was a street priest that he came to know many transgender folks. when Sister Mónica Astorga, a rock star of the Catholic LGBTQI community in Argentina decided to leave the Church but not her work, Pope Francis did NOT excommunicate her and instead sent her a letter of solidarity
https://www.rionegro.com.ar/sociedad/la-monja-que-acompano-a-las-mujeres-trans-en-neuquen-no-recibio-el-apoyo-de-la-iglesia-pero-si-del-papa-francisco/

anything you need, he basically told her …🧵

it is because he was a street priest that when Andrea Conocchia, one of the Italian street priests #PopeFrancis had in his confidence, introduced him to a group of Latina trangender prostitutes during the pandemic close downs, that he had them and others sit at his lunch table on Wednesdays
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-04-26/the-trans-women-who-sat-with-pope-francis-he-told-me-not-to-lose-faith-because-we-are-all-equal-in-the-eyes-of-god.html

…🧵

it is because he credits a woman with his political radicalization that he supported nuns like Geneviève Jeanningros, who not only has spent her life serving the LGBTQI but whose aunty was one of the thousands of nuns killed by the USA-backed dictaduras

https://www.clarin.com/mundo/genevieve-jeanningros-monja-logro-romper-estricto-protocolo-lloro-frente-feretro-papa-francisco_0_isFPVhLPim.html

and as i said in another thread, Pope Francis abolished nuncial secrecy for rapists and pedophiles in the Catholic Church.

the RCC refused to recognize rape of nuns & priests, so he abolished the privilege …🧵

and it is because of all of this that, notwithstanding what he said last year about the gender binary, his impact as a “social justice warrior” for the #LGBTQI community, cannot be underestimated.

last year, the Supreme Court of #Argentina recognized the dictaduras targeted assassinations of trans women as part of their genocidal war crimes.

❝ La Justicia argentina reconoce a personas trans como víctimas de delitos de lesa humanidad en un fallo histórico
https://elpais.com/argentina/2024-03-27/la-justicia-argentina-reconoce-a-personas-trans-como-victimas-de-delitos-de-lesa-humanidad-en-un-fallo-historico.html

…🧵

as i said before,
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/114375252519201798

am speaking about the Catholic Church, the OG corporatist organization. they literally invented management by committee. RCC bureaucracy is legendary.

so i get why the Catholic LGBTQI community considers #PopeFrancis the most revolutionary pope ever:

❝ Pope Francis was a pastoral revolutionary for LGBTQ Catholics | National Catholic Reporter https://www.ncronline.org/news/pope-francis-was-pastoral-revolutionary-lgbtq-catholics

…🧵