Vatican sources deny Washington Post report alleging Pope Leo XIV excluded transgender attendees from head table, calling seating random and apolitical.
Newsroom (18/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) A Washington Post article published the day after Pope Leo XIV’s public meal with the poor in Rome, has ignited sharp criticism. the article suggested the new pope deliberately sidelined transgender guests at a Jubilee of the Poor luncheon, drawing an explicit ideological contrast with his predecessor, Pope Francis.
The Post’s November 17 headline — “Trans women attend Vatican event with Pope Leo, but not at the head table” — cited two unnamed sources who described the absence of transgender individuals from the papal table as notable and potentially meaningful. The newspaper framed the seating arrangement as a litmus test for Leo XIV’s willingness to continue Francis-era gestures toward LGBTQ+ communities, noting that in previous years Francis had personally invited transgender women from the Roman suburb of Torvaianica to sit with him.
Vatican officials swiftly rejected the interpretation as baseless and politically motivated.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Papal Almoner who organized Sunday’s meal for 1,300 poor and homeless people in the Paul VI Audience Hall, told reporters that the nineteen guests seated at the Pope’s table were chosen spontaneously during the Angelus prayer that morning. “There was no list, no pre-selection, no exclusions,” Krajewski said. “The Holy Father simply pointed to people in the crowd and said, ‘You, you, and you—come sit with me.’ It was completely random.”
The cardinal also dismissed speculation that transgender activist Alessia Nobile or any individual had secured invitations through direct requests for private audiences. He emphasized that all 1,300 tickets were distributed through diocesan Caritas offices, parishes, shelters, and other frontline charities, which alone decided whom to bring.
Several of the transgender attendees are believed to have been invited by Father Andrea Conocchia, the parish priest of Torvaianica who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitated contact between a group of transgender sex workers from his community and Pope Francis. Those earlier encounters—widely publicized and praised in progressive circles—appear to have fueled expectations that Leo XIV would replicate the same highly visible gestures.
Italian Catholic outlet La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana accused parts of the international press of attempting to “transform an act of ordinary charity into a political battlefield.” The newspaper argued that activist networks and sympathetic journalists had spent more than a week priming coverage around the anticipated presence of “transgender activists,” creating a narrative framework in which any deviation from Francis’s playbook could be portrayed as ideological regression.
Critics of the Post’s coverage contend the story exemplifies a broader pattern: reducing the Church’s service to the poor to identity-based scorekeeping and pressuring the new pontificate to perform progressive bona fides on demand.
In a statement to journalists on Monday, the Vatican Press Office described the luncheon as “a moment of fraternal sharing with the poorest of Rome, without categories, without staging, and without ideological agendas.” Pope Leo XIV, who served the meal himself and spent nearly two hours greeting guests individually, has made care for the marginalized a centerpiece of his still-nascent papacy, but has signaled he intends to do so in a spirit of evangelical simplicity rather than symbolic spectacle.
As of Tuesday evening, the Washington Post had not issued a correction or update to its original report.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Tribune Chretienne
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