On November 16, during the jubilee event dedicated to the poor, Pope Leo XIV had lunch in the Paul VI Hall with some representatives of the ‘category of the poor’ (whatever that may mean).
Among the diners were several transgender individuals. The exact number is unknown, but reports speak of more than thirty participants. Among them was Alessia Nobile, an activist known for having been, in 2016, the first ‘biologically male’ person in Southern Italy to obtain legal gender change without undergoing surgery to change external sexual characteristics.
The following day, the American progressive newspaper The Washington Post criticized the event, emphasizing that none of the transgender activists had been seated at the Pope’s table. According to the article, this choice might suggest a discriminatory attitude, if not even a form of transphobia on the part of the Pope or his staff.
Two anonymous individuals allegedly told the prestigious newspaper that “this year no seats at the places of honor were assigned to transsexual women, without any explanation.” Indeed, in 2023, during similar gatherings, Pope Francis had gladly eaten next to transsexuals.
However, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner and a staunch Bergoglian from the very beginning, clarified—when contacted by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, an important Italian Catholic outlet of conservative orientation—that the uproar stirred by The Washington Post is meaningless, since “the nineteen people at the table with the Holy Father were chosen randomly, at the last moment, during the Angelus.” No discriminatory intent, then, in the cardinal’s intentions, and he even appeared rather proud of the event’s success.
Cardinal Krajewski, with the typical clerical style, rejected any responsibility by explaining that the 1,300 invitations had been distributed to associations, shelters, soup kitchens, foundations, Caritas centers, and parishes in rough neighborhoods, adding, “It was their directors who decided to whom to give them, not us.”
But this explanation is an obvious fig leaf, since Alessia Nobile’s participation had already received extensive media attention during the previous week, and it is hard to believe that the Vatican had not noticed.
Beyond the original intentions of the organizers, the controversy highlights the fragility and ambiguity surrounding the use of the category of ‘the poor’ in the contemporary Church.
For decades, one has witnessed a pseudo-Marxist use of the category of ‘the poor’ within Catholic circles. No longer simply the indigent, the one lacking what is necessary and calling for help; no longer the destitute whom the Church has always served in a spirit of humility—not to keep him in his condition, but to redeem him, providing not only economic means but also intellectual, spiritual, and cultural tools so that he might attain, if not wealth, at least material well-being.
In the dominant political vocabulary, the poor is instead the oppressed: the member of a class or group perceived as the victim of a power structure. As such, the prevailing view takes for granted a sociological lens that is anything but obvious and indeed is sorely tested when confronted with serious scientific analysis.
Marxism spoke of the proletarian class as the sole bearer of historical justice. Today’s cultural Left has transferred this dynamic to sexual minorities, considered ‘victims’ of the dominant sexual class, the so-called cisgender population, whose avatar is the European, Christian, white, heterosexual male. It is a semantic inversion that has nothing to do with Christian anthropology. For the Church, man is not poor because he is oppressed by a social group, but because he bears within himself the fragility of the human condition wounded by sin and burdened by concrete material miseries, personal rather than social.
To adopt this ideological framework means accepting—perhaps unknowingly—that poverty is no longer tied to real need, tangible suffering, hunger, loneliness, lack of housing or employment, but to a presumed ‘oppressed identity.’ Thus, the transgender activist, who may enjoy enormous media visibility, automatically becomes ‘poor,’ while the nun bottle-feeding an African infant remains a marginal figure in the narrative, almost a relic of the past. This is the ambiguity that emerges and that many faithful perceive with growing dismay.
A crucial question remains: was this lunch authentic Christian charity or rather simple philanthropy? In the Gospel perspective, the difference is substantial. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” the Gospel warns: the Church’s charity has always been discreet, modest, almost hidden. It does not seek cameras, does not bow to trends, does not beg for approval. The risk, instead, is to transform charity into spectacle, thus endorsing ideology. The Pharisees understood this well, which is why they loved to flaunt their almsgiving. One wonders whether, deep down, certain palace theologians do not harbor a similar attitude.
That the Holy Father wishes to meet everyone, without exclusion, is good and right. Jesus Himself ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, yet He did not justify the anthropological views they professed. For such gestures to be understood in their evangelical truth, clarity is needed: clarity about the meaning of poverty, clarity about the Christian vision of man, clarity about the pastoral intention. Without such transparency, the Church risks appearing as a tool for ideologically confirming the categories of the world. And documents like Dilexi Te do not seem to correct the course.
