At the Vatican’s annual “lunch for the poor” this past Sunday, Pope Leo XIV, hailing from Chicago, appeared to distance himself from a group of 48 transgender women by excluding them from his head table.

This seating arrangement marked a departure from the access these women had previously enjoyed under Pope Francis, leading many attendees to view it as a clear act of disregard.

In both 2023 and 2024, these women had twice been invited to join Pope Francis at his table. However, under Pope Leo XIV, they found themselves placed at separate tables within the Paul VI Hall.

This new arrangement meant they lost the symbolic position that had represented the late Pope Francis’s notable outreach to transgender members of the Catholic community.

Alessia Nobile, an Italian transgender author, managed to give Pope Leo XIV a letter, receiving only a smile as he moved on. Many others did not have the opportunity to speak with him at all.

‘That he’d mingle, that he [sat] close to [us], that’s a good sign, right?’ said  Nobile who had hoped Pope Leo’s warmth toward her group would match Francis’s. 

Nobile said she managed to hand the new pontiff a letter ‘on behalf of the trans community,’ receiving only a smile in return.

Vatican organizers insist there’s no conspiracy and that the seating was random, denying any deliberate slight had occurred.

Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV is under scrutiny after a group of 48 transgender women were excluded from his head table at the Vatican’s annual ‘lunch for the poor’ on Sunday

Pope Leo XIV attends a lunch with the poor on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Poor and the 9th World Day of the Poor inside the Paul VI Hall, Vatican City, on Sunday

Pope Leo XIV greets faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square before a Mass on the Jubilee of the Poor on Sunday in Vatican City, Vatican. Mass and Lunch with the Holy Father, was organized by the Dicastery for the Service of Charity at Paul VI Hall

The widely watched gathering inside the Vatican’s sprawling Paul VI Hall is attended by more than 1,300 migrants, homeless visitors, disabled guests and low-income families.

The lunch was meant to serve as a continuation of the late pontiff’s high-profile outreach to marginalized LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The trans women, many of them Latin Americans from Torvaianica just outside of Rome, had been personally greeted by Francis at papal audiences and seated at his head table in previous years, found themselves clustered at separate tables.

‘He welcomed the guests to ‘this lunch so strongly backed by our much beloved Pope Francis,’ according to the event program, before offering a blessing and settling into a menu of lasagna and chicken cutlets.

It was only when the trans women arrived they found their head-table access had vanished without explanation.

‘We weren’t able to meet the pope,’ acknowledged the Rev. Andrea Conocchia, the liberal priest who ministers to the Torvaianica trans community, ‘but they still ‘had us sit at tables very, very close to the pope.’

Conocchia insisted the atmosphere ‘went well,’ calling it both ‘fraternal’ and ‘joyful.’

In an interview with The Washington Post, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Vatican’s longtime organizer of the Pope’s charity events, insisted that no slight was intended.

Priest Andrea Conocchia, on the beach of Torvaianica, has helped local transgender women find assistance from the Vatican 

The women found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the late pontiff, Pope Francis, and the local parish priest Andrea Conocchia, right

Vatican organizers say the seating was random and denied that any deliberate slight had occurred

The widely watched gathering inside the Vatican’s sprawling Paul VI Hall is attended by more than 1,300 migrants, homeless visitors, disabled guests and low-income families

The women had been welcomed twice to the late Pope Francis’s own table in previous years

He said the head-table seats had been given out ‘randomly’ to parishioners who attended an earlier Mass and that the trans women ‘had arrived late.’ 

Any effort to paint the seating chart as symbolic, he warned, would be an overreach.

‘The church is open to everyone,’ Krajewski said. ‘It’s not about [Leo] meaning to carry on this outreach. They came because they’re an integral part of the church, that is all.’

Marcella Di Marco, 52, said that although she sensed ‘some disappointment,’ she believed the door Francis opened had not been slammed shut.

‘But we still received a sense that the church is not going to close the door that it opened,’ she said. ‘Pope Leo is different from Francis, but he knows we have hard lives and I believe his heart is open to us.’

Since his election, Pope Leo, long viewed as more cautious and institutionally minded than the charismatic Francis, has tread lightly around LGBTQ+ issues, even as he has upheld Francis’s theological framework.

In a 2012 Vatican forum, Leo openly criticized pop-culture portrayals of homosexuality.

And in a recent book based on conversations with him, he described the LGBTQ+ debate as ‘highly polarizing within the church,’ noting that for many Catholics outside the West, ‘that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another.’

Priest Andrea Conocchia, from Torvaianica, with three transgender women that he has helped, from left, Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, also known as Consuelo, Carla Segovia and Claudia Vittoria Salas

The woman had been seated on Pope Francis’ table in previous years. Pictured, Priest Andrea Conocchia, right, with members of a group of transgender women he accompanied  in 2023

The lunch was meant to serve as a continuation of the late pontiff’s high-profile outreach to marginalized LGBTQ+ Catholics

 Pope Leo XVI attends a special lunch with the poor on Sunday in Vatican City, Vatican

Pope Leo XIV is seen arriving for a lunch on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Poor in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican

 Pope Leo XIV is seen attending a lunch with the poor on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Poor and the 9th World Day of the Poor inside the Paul VI Hall, Vatican City

Yet he has echoed Francis on a crucial point – that LGBTQ+ Catholics are ‘a son or daughter of God,’ and therefore welcome.

He has also quietly approved certain gestures once unthinkable for a pope. 

In September, he privately authorized a special Mass for more than 1,450 pilgrims attending a historic LGBTQ+ gathering ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 jubilee, but chose not to acknowledge it publicly.

What he has not done is continue Francis’s deeply personal rapport with trans visitors. 

Francis held dozens of papal audiences with trans women, often bringing them to the front row, greeting them by name and offering blessings that reverberated far beyond Rome.

The Catholic Church still defines homosexuality as ‘intrinsically disordered.’ 

Francis also opposed same-sex marriage within the Church and denounced ‘gender theory’ as akin to ‘nuclear weapons’, yet he also backed civil unions, approved brief blessings for same-sex couples and clarified that transgender people may serve as godparents and receive baptism.