Editor’s note: This article was updated 02/17/2024 to include a statement from the St. Patrick’s Cathedral pastor.
CV NEWS FEED // St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City held a funeral service for an LGBTQ activist this week and the event’s organizer said he kept the “transgender” identity of the deceased “under wraps” while planning the gathering with church administrators.
On Thursday, February 15, a crowd of LGBTQ activists held a funeral for Cecilia Gentili at the historic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, New York. Gentili was “a transgender activist and actress, former sex worker and self-professed atheist,” according to the New York Times. Gentili passed away on February 6 at age 52.
The funeral service did not include the Mass. Fr. Edward Dougherty officiated at the funeral service and reportedly did not mention anything of Gentili’s background while presiding.
The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan posted on social media:
[Doughtery joked at the beginning of the service,] “Except on Easter Sunday, we don’t really have a crowd that is this well turned out,” to which the crowd of trans activists cheers + claps.
CatholicVote posted several videos from the funeral on X (formerly known as Twitter), highlighting that the funeral was a “mockery of the Christian faith” and of St. Cecilia, who is honored in the Roman Catholic Church as a virgin and martyr:
The mob staged a supposed funeral service for Cecilia Gentili, a transgender, atheist prostitute [who] they eulogized as: “This whore. This great whore. St. Cecilia, Mother of all Whores!”
The Times reported:
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.
Mass cards and a picture near the altar showed a haloed Ms. Gentili surrounded by the Spanish words for “transvestite,” “whore,” “blessed” and “mother” above the text of Psalm 25.
The Archdiocese of New York did not respond to the Times’ questions on “whether the church had been aware of Ms. Gentili’s background when it agreed to host her funeral.”
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, told the Times that “if a request comes in for a funeral from a Catholic, the cathedral does its best to accommodate.”
Zwilling “did not know whether or not Ms. Gentili had attended Mass at the cathedral, or if any other transgender people had had their funerals there,” the Times reported, noting Zwilling added that “a funeral is one of the corporal works of mercy.”
Ceyenne Doroshow organized the funeral and said he did not mention Gentili’s “transgender” identity when he planned the funeral with the church.
“I kind of kept it under wraps,” Doroshow said, according to the Times. Doroshow explained that Gentili’s friends “had wanted the service to be at St. Patrick’s because ‘it is an icon, just like her.’”
During the funeral service, someone in attendance “took the lectern to pray for access to gender-affirming health care,” the Times reported:
At another [part of the funeral], a mourner upstaged a priest singing “Ave Maria,” changing the lyrics to “Ave Cecilia.” She then danced through the aisles, red scarves twirling around her.
Readers can find the full recording of the event’s livestream below.
The pastor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fr. Enrique Salvo, issued a statement on February 17. According to a social media post by Dominican priest Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, Salvo stated:
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.
Readers can find several prayers of reparation for insults and blasphemies against God here.
