The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet is one of the oldest religious institutions in St. Louis. For more than a century, the nuns have lived, prayed and worked inside an imposing brick motherhouse in the city's south side, not far from the banks of the Mississippi River.
On a recent Friday evening, a lawn sign with a rainbow background and the words "Save Trans Lives" sat outside the entrance to the motherhouse dining room. It's an uncommon message in the traditional enclaves of Catholic St. Louis.
Sister Nancy Corcoran, who placed the sign, is an unusual nun.
She took her vows more than 50 years ago. Now 81, she has spent the past two years quietly hosting meetings for Catholic parents of transgender children.
The gatherings are intentionally "affirming" meetings, she emphasized. Unlike other Catholic support groups in the region, there is no talk of celibacy or prayer that children will stop being trans or gay. Instead, parents share meals and stories about the pressure on their families, and their faith, as they support their kids at a time when transgender Missourians are a focus of heated political and cultural battles.
The meetings are not secret, but nor are they endorsed by the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Corcoran said. About two dozen Catholic parents have joined her for dinner at the motherhouse since the gatherings began.
"They share their stories," Corcoran said. "They eat, they talk about being Catholic, work and being affirming parents."
There are heavy moments.
At a meeting earlier this year, a group of eight Catholic parents compared notes on how different Catholic high schools approach the use of pronouns. One woman said she felt like she was living "a double life," since her child was not yet ready to transition publicly. Other parents had adult children, with careers and families and pressure of their own.
Supporting a trans child can present unfamiliar challenges for parents. Corcoran noted that some have to "take on the shame" that other people project on their children.
"They have to realize it is not about them, it's about their child," she said of the parents she ministers to. "Do they want their child to become the best person that they can be, whoever that is, whether it's male or female?"
Needing to learn
For most of her life, Corcoran considered gender a settled concept of men and women. Around a decade ago, as a college instructor, she had a moment of revelation when she met a transgender student for the first time.
Nearing retirement and with the opportunity to take a sabbatical, Corcoran told herself, "Nancy, you're blind and stupid in an area that is making a big difference to people's lives, and so you need to learn."
She spent the next two years traveling to conferences and talking to trans people and their families. When she returned to St. Louis — where she had spent years teaching in Catholic schools — she quietly began attending support meetings with parents of trans children, organized by the local chapter of TransParent.
Corcoran said she spent those first meetings silent, listening. She thought, "Why would people want a nun to come in and listen to these sacred stories?"
Eventually, she introduced herself to the group, remembering it as "a moment of grace."
"I just said, 'I need to tell you all that I'm a Roman Catholic nun, and I have so learned from you all.' I'd never learned about unconditional love in the convent, but going to the TransParent meetings, I learned about unconditional love."
One of the parents in that group later contacted Corcoran. She was Catholic, too.
"She deeply loved her church, and she wanted to meet other Catholic parents who affirmed their children," Corcoran recalls. "She looked at me, and I'm thinking, really, what can I do?"
The question drove her to host the regular meetings at the motherhouse.
She doesn't see herself as the group's leader. Although she can feed the parents and guide the conversation around the table, she quickly realized there were even bigger challenges — and a constant fear. The tension often involved the annual attempts by Missouri's Republican-majority legislature to pass laws that would ban forms of gender-affirming care, sports participation and bathroom access.
Some parents stopped showing up.
"I know 40 families who have already left the state. These are good, hardworking people," Corcoran said. "Every family of a trans child knows how long it will take to get across the river into Illinois, how long it would take to get to Canada, and, if they can afford it, they all have passports. That's the kind of terror that they live in. When you think that when a child goes to school, they have to worry about where they're going to go to the bathroom. Really?"
Standing together
On April 21, Corcoran was among more than 20 faith leaders from various denominations gathered in Tower Grove Park to deliver a collective message as the LGBTQ+ Faith Alliance.
Reading from a statement, Corcoran said, "We declare all people are beloved and created in the image of God, holy and whole."
Standing next to Corcoran was the Rev. Eli Anthony, an assistant pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Saint Louis. He said these gatherings of support — whether Corcoran's private meetings or public demonstrations — are making a difference for trans people in their congregations.
"As both a person of faith and as a trans person, it means so much that people are just willing to try and have these conversations," Anthony said. "We really wanted people here in Missouri to know, especially transgender people [and] nonbinary people, that they belong here in Missouri. That they're loved and that love can be the loudest voice in the room."
Anthony has experienced other sorts of rooms, with different voices. Earlier this year, he traveled to Jefferson City with other trans people to spend hours waiting for his turn to testify against legislation that would impact his life directly.
This year, states like Kansas passed harsh new restrictions on bathroom access. A similar measure in Missouri was proposed during the recently concluded legislative session. Lobbyists for the Missouri Catholic Conference — "the public policy agency of the Catholic Church in Missouri" — testified in favor of the bill.
"In many ways it was deeply heartbreaking to be a part of, to witness [people] try to say that trans people don't exist, or to talk so much about where someone is going to the bathroom," Anthony said. "It is also so empowering to see trans person after trans person just come and testify that 'I'm beloved and I am just a person trying to exist in this world,' and trying to show each other our own humanity."
For Anthony, the support of a Catholic nun felt significant.
"Teachings that don't affirm queer children, that don't affirm trans children, cause separation. It causes heartbreak. It causes suicide," he said. "It causes people to flee Missouri. It causes people to flee the church."
Anthony learned these lessons not just through his role as a pastor, but from experience.
"I come from a strict Catholic family background," he said. "It took five or so years, but my own family is now very accepting of me. They call me Eli, they use my pronouns. But I think I understand the pain and fear that parents have, they want their kid to go to heaven, they want their kid to belong in this world. I can't imagine hearing state legislation, seeing social media, that fear."
Faith, Anthony argues — and affirming queer children — provides an answer to that fear.
"I think the work of faith leaders in the church is to help people lean into that trust and lean into that love," he said. "And [to] know that God is so wholly just and so wholly loving."
It's a belief that Corcoran shares.
Even after a life of service as a nun, she said she remains hopeful the church can evolve in its understanding of LGBTQ Catholics and their families. She praised Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski for speaking publicly about the church's history with slavery in the St. Louis region.
"The archbishop, God bless him, he preaches his embarrassment about having had three of his predecessors own slaves. Our archbishop has been fabulous, educating all of us, encouraging the archives in the archdiocese to look and to see who we were and who we never want to be again," Corcoran said.
To Corcoran, that willingness to learn from history offers reason for hope.
"Yes, of course, the church will change," she said. "It always gets better."
To hear the full conversation with Sister Nancy Corcoran and the Rev. Eli Anthony, listen to "St. Louis on the Air" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below.
"St. Louis on the Air" brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Layla Halilbasic is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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