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ROME, ITALY - MARCH 30: Pope Francis attends the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum on March 30, 2018 in Rome, Italy.Franco Origlia/Getty Images

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NEUQUÉN, Argentina, August 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – After a controversial nun opened in Argentina a residence for ‘trans women’ — men who choose to identify as women — Pope Francis praised her work, referring to the men as “girls.”

Sister Mónica Astorga Cremona, 53, known locally in Argentina as the “Nun of the Trans,” cut the ribbon on the new complex of twelve small apartments dedicated solely to housing men claiming to be women and their partners.

Upon hearing the news the Pope responded in a communication, according to the nun, “Dear Monica, God who did not go to the seminary or study theology will repay you abundantly. I pray for you and your girls.”

The Supreme Pontiff, according to the nun, referred to the males, reported to be between 40 and 70 years old, as “girls.”  

“Do not forget to pray for me. May Jesus blesses (sic) you and may the Holy Virgin take care of you,” he added, according to a report by Newsflare.  

Last year, Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, joined by other prelates, issued a public declaration of truths of the faith where they called it a rebellion and “grave sin” for a man to “attempt to become a woman.”

“The male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities created by the wise will of God (see Gen. 1: 27; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 369). It is, therefore, a rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2297),” the document states. 

Pro-LGBT Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin was delighted with the Pope’s congratulatory words to Sister Monica Cremona, saying in a Tweet:  “Wow. Pope Francis sends his support for a Catholic sister in Argentina who ministers to transsexual women.”

Sister Monica has affirmed since 2015 that Pope Francis has known of her work and that he supports it.  Her personal relationship with the pontiff dates back well before that, back to “before he was a bishop,” according to a 2017 Crux report

The Discalced Carmelite explained in a “Queering the Church” report at the time that the Pope told her in an email, “In Jesus’ time, the lepers were rejected like that. They [the trans women] are the lepers of these times. Don’t leave this work on the frontier that is yours.”

“Though indistinct in English … Francis used the female pronoun when saying that the transgender persons are the lepers of today,” according to Crux’s Inés San Martín. 

In 2016, Pope Francis referred to a woman who had undergone a sex-change operation as a “man,” and also referred to her as having “married” another woman and admitted to receiving them in the Vatican last year.   

Referring to the post-trans surgery woman, the Pope said, “He got married.”  

‘He that was ‘her’ but is he,’ explained Pope Francis. 

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Sister Monica, in a video interview at the opening of the ‘trans’ home, said that Catholics have made people who present themselves as a member of the opposite sex “live in darkness.”  

“My dream was that the Trans had a dignified home because they are never given this opportunity. They do not have any rights to anything. The apartments are very ‘bright’ and they have lived in darkness because of us – we made them live in darkness. Because we have turned our back on them and they always lived in darkness,” she said. 

“So they need to take advantage of this light, as I call it, of this place that is the only one in the world. There are no houses for trans in any part of the world,” she added. 

One man, who will be living in the new complex while identifying as female, said that people like him face many difficulties. 

“The places that we have always lived and we have always rented, the people always took advantage of our condition of being trans women. On a lease that was charging 5,000 pesos, just for an example, we would pay 15,000  just because we were trans. Just because we were trans women,” he said in the video report.   

“And it's not like a place like this one that is clean, with all services. We have lived in places with humidity, rats, insects. Trans women always live poorly,” he explained. 

The “Tutored Social Condominium for Trans Women,” conceived by Sister Monica, was built by the Provincial Institute of Housing and Urbanism (IPVU) with government funds in Argentine Patagonia.  Its operation has been turned over to the Discalced Carmelites. 

Spanish translation supplied by Katarina Carranco.