A nun's secret ministry brings hope to the transgender communityhttp://america.aljazeera.com/features/2014/3/transgender-and-catholic.htmlAljazeera America.
by Nathan Schneider @nathanairplane March 2, 2014
Nathan Schneider explores the unresolved challenge of transgender identity for the Catholic Church and one woman's courageous, life-saving response.
"Maureen Osborne's mind started to wander. This was 2001, at a conference of the organization now called the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which took place that year in Galveston, Texas. Several hundred people filled the room. Another panel, another question-and-answer period. Osborne is a Philadelphia-based psychologist, and at the time more and more of her therapy practice was focusing on patients struggling with gender identity. There was a lot to take in at these panels, not all of it useful. And then something caught her attention.
"I heard, without looking or seeing, a woman's voice," she remembers. "She was publicly apologizing to all the transgender people in the world for the damage done to them by the Catholic Church." Though not trans, Osborne had grown up Catholic and felt damaged by the church herself.
Osborne's head turned. At the microphone where people were asking questions, there was a small woman with a determined posture, prominent cheekbones and close-cropped dark hair beginning to gray. Her intonation betrayed a drawl. She went on to say that she was a nun, and had begun ministering in the trans community and had come to the conference to learn how to be better at it. There was a standing ovation.
"I was speechless," Osborne says."
