The proposal deserves critical examination because it combines both a legitimate call to compassion for those suffering gender dysphoria with a historically and doctrinally problematic reinterpretation of Catholic sainthood.
The article’s central suggestion appears to be that certain saints should be understood through the modern category of “transgender identity.” That claim requires evidence.
Historical figures who adopted clothing, names, or social roles associated with the opposite sex cannot automatically be classified as transgender in the contemporary sense. Their actions may have arisen from persecution, asceticism, religious vocation, or personal safety. Nothing in such conduct, by itself, proves that they rejected their biological sex or embraced the modern theory that subjective identity determines whether one is male or female.
The Church’s teaching is clear that male and female possess equal dignity while also possessing a real distinction grounded in creation, and each person should accept their sexual identity, which cannot change. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:
By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.
This teaching is not a mere endorsement of social stereotypes but concerns the human person as an embodied unity. The 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita, released even under the pontificate of Pope Francis, affirms that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God’” and emphasizes that human beings are “inseparably composed of both body and soul.” The body is therefore not an accidental shell that may be reinterpreted independently of the person’s created nature.
The same declaration adds that the body possesses personal meaning “particularly in its sexed condition.” It quotes Pope Francis confirming that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift” and that human beings are called to accept and respect their humanity “as it was created.” These principles exclude the claim that a person’s subjective gender identity can simply replace his or her bodily sex.
None of this, of course, in any way justifies contempt for persons with gender dysphoria. On the contrary, Catholic teaching grounds a profound obligation to respect them as one is bound to respect the ontological dignity of each and every human being.
Dignitas Infinita goes on to teach that dignity comes from the Creator, who has placed his image upon every person, and that dignity belongs not only to the soul but also to the person as an “inseparable unity of body and soul.” Christ’s Incarnation confirms that ontological dignity “can never be lost,” including by those who are weak, despised, or suffering.
The declaration goes on to affirm that while “sin can wound and obscure human dignity, as it is an act contrary to that dignity,” it “can never cancel the fact that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God,” and is thus deserving of respect for this divine origin and the exalted destiny of eternal beatitude to which they are called.
Therefore, as common sense and the rule of fundamental charity dictates, Catholics and others should obviously reject any violence, mockery, unjust discrimination or deliberate humiliation against persons who identify as “transgender,” but should will their good and strive, as far as possible, to offer some level of friendship and genuine care.
This being the case, respect for such persons, however, does not require affirming every interpretation that person makes concerning his or her body. Or does prayer for them require any level of ideological approval.
Catholics may certainly pray for transgender persons — for their peace, protection, healing, and salvation. But praying to a person as a saint requires that the person be recognized by the Church as enjoying the beatific vision and that the proposed account of that person’s life be historically credible. The Church does not canonize people for possessing a modern political or psychological identity. Saints are honored because, through grace, they lived in heroic fidelity to Christ.
The NCR article’s language therefore risks converting the saints into instruments of contemporary advocacy for dubious ideologies. Rather than allowing the saints to challenge every age with the Gospel, it makes them appear to endorse categories that did not govern their lives and that conflict with Catholic teaching on the unity of body and soul.
Catholics and all others of good will should respond to such efforts with both charity and clarity. Every transgender person deserves respect because every person bears the image of God. Yet Catholics cannot celebrate an ideology that separates personal identity from embodied creation or can they retroactively label saints “trans” without reliable evidence. Genuine pastoral charity must remain inseparable from truth.
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