Despite creating an international furor and raising profound canonical questions over her claims of being “transgender,” a woman who currently lives as a male hermit was recently received by Pope Francis as an honored guest at the Vatican.
At the conclusion of the weekly general audience, October 23, Pope Francis made his customary way around the attendees. The Pontiff first greeted the cardinals or bishops present before then greeting those seated closest to him, including the new married couples and those deemed to be special guests for each particular audience.
Among those guests were a group of self-professed “transgender” individuals, who were present in Rome courtesy of Father James Martin SJ’s pro-LGBT Outreach group. Outreach had held a closed-door event on the sidelines of the Synod on Synodality some days before, which was closely followed by a private papal audience for “transgender” individuals and others organized by New Ways Ministry.
Maxwell Kuzma, a woman who presents herself as a “transgender man,” provided an account of the October 23 meeting with Francis – an encounter that was orchestrated by local priest Father Andrea Conocchia, who has a longstanding arrangement in bringing gender-confused individuals to meet Francis.
In the party was “Christian Matson,” a woman born as Nicole who now identifies as a man and lives as a diocesan hermit in Bishop John Stowe’s Diocese of Lexington.
Matson became the subject of international Catholic media controversy when she announced her transgender self-identification earlier this year.
In the 22 official Vatican Media photographs, Matson can be seen dressed in a quasi-Dominican habit and asking Francis for a blessing.
As for Kuzma, she introduced herself to Francis saying, “I am a transgender man” and noting that she was a friend of Fr. Martin. “Francis beamed,” Kuzma wrote, adding that the meeting confirmed her in her “transgender identity”:
After years of suppressing my identity, I am now free: free to be exactly who God made me… I am proud of myself for telling him that I am transgender [sic] in his native language, and equally proud that the Catholic Church has a pope who responds so warmly and pastorally to the [so-called] transgender members of his flock.
The Catholic Church teaches that God creates every individual male or female at the moment of his or her conception, and sex is an immutable trait that “characterizes man and woman not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions.”
Catholic teaching also condemns mutilation and sterilization as “against the moral law” and denounces gender ideology.
Francis’ signal of approval in US controversy
Matson’s public meeting with, and welcome by, Francis is notable, being seen as a confirmation of her life choices that fundamentally reject Catholic teaching.
Raised as Presbyterian, Matson previously explained to Religion News Service (RNS) that she converted to Catholicism four years after her “sex change” in college.
Matson was welcomed by Stowe into the Diocese of Lexington as a “transgender hermit,” despite the bishop having full knowledge of Matson’s “sex change” surgery.
After Matson’s spring revelation of being a professed “transgender,” Stowe publicly supported her in the face of Catholic consternation. He defended Matson’s life and identity as a “transgender man” and said he was “grateful to Brother Christian [Nicole] for his [her] witness of discipleship.”
Matson has since become a more public figure linked with events in the American LGBT activist circle, such as Fr. Martin’s 2024 Outreach conference. Attending the event this summer, Matson opined that the Catholic Church has need of “transgender” individuals in religious life. Reports documented that the conference “underscored the urgency” for Matson to complete her book, “which presents a theological argument for the inclusion of [so-called] trans people in consecrated life.”
Matson protested that women living as “transgender men” were being refused admission to religious life.
“These are great men who fully should be in religious communities,” she claimed. “They’re excellent candidates. The only reason that they’re not admitted is because of their medical history, their trans status.”
Demonstrating her commitment to this cause, Matson was accompanied at the Outreach conference by “five young transgender men,” who joined her in a “private retreat” in addition to partaking in the weekend program.
Speaking to LifeSite’s Emily Mangiaracina in May, canon lawyer Mother Therese Ivers stated that “a transexual is ineligible for any ecclesial vocation” due to “the fact that they are not acting in accordance with the biological sex with which they are gifted by God upon their conception.”
Though Matson claims to live the counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Mother Ivers stated that her very life as a transgender-identifying individual is a “very grave violation” against chastity, not in the sense that chastity is normally understood, but in reference to transsexuals’ “act against biological reality” and “against the type of human person that God intended that person to be.”
Ivers added that “a violation against the vow of chastity can include bodily mutilation and encouraging others to do the same. Such a sin would be morally grave in nature – we are not judging the soul – and would also incur sacrilege because it goes against the promise made to God (virtue of religion).”
Francis’ mixed record
The Pope – though decrying transgender ideology in some comments and texts – has nevertheless appeared to support the movement by his actions. He has repeatedly warmly welcomed LGBT or transgender groups to the Vatican, without appearing to outline the Church’s teaching on human sexuality or call them to a conversion of life.
Some members of the local gender-confused group linked to Fr. Conocchia now make a monthly trip to Pope Francis’ weekly general audience, at which they are given seats of honor. Nor are they the only pro-transgender or LGBT groups welcomed by the Pope: numerous such groups document and praise their meetings with Francis at the audiences.
Last year, during the annual Vatican lunch for the poor, Francis astonished the international media when he picked a “transgender” member of the local group to sit opposite him at table.
In contrast to the Pope’s affirmation of the transgender group’s way of life, Catholic teaching on transgender issues remains unchanged. The Catechism states: “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity,” referring to one’s sex. (CCC # 2333)
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1975 document, Persona Humana, stated: “There can be no true promotion of man’s dignity unless the essential order of his nature is respected.”
Indeed, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1986, the CDF issued a document instructing bishops on the pastoral care of professed homosexual persons. The CDF admonished bishops to ensure they, and any “pastoral programme” in the diocese are “clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral.”
More recently, Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, together with several other bishops, wrote in their 2019 Declaration of Truths that “gender reassignment” surgery is a “grave sin” and a “rebellion” against divine and natural law.
Officially supported by Bishop Stowe, and now fresh from receiving a papal blessing, Matson appears to be unlikely to conform to Catholic teaching on human sexuality and cease living as if she were a man.