Renegade

Not everyone religious is against us, some are rebels in their own church; a Catholic nun is one such person.

Inside Sister Monica’s Secret Ministry To Transgender People
"She helped me realize I do not walk this journey by myself."
Huffington Religion
Religion News Service
By Renee Gadoua
Posted: 08/11/2015

(RNS) Sister Monica lives alone in a small house at the edge of a Roman Catholic college run by a community of nuns.

She doesn’t want to reveal the name of the town where she lives, the name of her Catholic order or her real name.

Sister Monica lives in hiding, so that others may live in plain sight.

Now in her early 70s and semiretired because of health problems, she remains committed to her singular calling for the past 16 years: ministering to transgender people and helping them come out of the shadows.
[…]
Although the Catholic Church has issued no clear teaching on transgender people, church teaching that homosexual relations are a sin suggests a similar view of transgender people. A Vatican document in 2000 said gender reassignment surgery does not change a person’s gender in the eyes of the church. In 2008, Pope Benedict urged Catholics to defend “the nature of man against its manipulation.”

But doesn’t see it that way, and there are also other in the church that support her.

Over the years, Sister Monica says she has received “quiet support” from two bishops and several priests. The end of two Vatican investigations that questioned American nuns’ loyalty to church teaching has also relieved some pressure on her ministry secret.

But I have to wonder what would happen if her ministry was found out by other church officials?