How a trans sex worker from Paraguay became friends with the Pope

The pontiff has been welcoming transwomen to the Vatican.

By Greg Owen Thursday, May 9, 2024


Pope Francis during lunch with the poor on the occasion of the VII World Day of the Poor in the Paul VI Hall on November 19th, 2023.Photo: Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Im


On Thursday, Pope Francis presided over a ceremony that laid out his vision for the coming 2025 Jubilee, a once-every-quarter-century event that will bring tens of millions of Catholic pilgrims to Rome. The papal bull, delivered in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica, laid out a vision of hope for the coming Holy Year, asking for gestures of solidarity with the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.

Since he rose to the papacy in 2013 and famously declared, “Who am I to judge,” hope for those neglected, disenfranchised, and ostracized people has been central to his tenure. Lately, those people have included a group of trans sex workers who have earned the pope’s attention.

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Over the last several years, Francis has earned the enmity of conservative Catholics for welcoming LGBTQ+ people with his approval of blessings for same-sex couples and a declaration that “being homosexual is not a crime.” Concurrently, Francis has welcomed dozens of transgender women, many of them sex workers, to the Vatican for blessings and audiences and even a lunch that brought a busload of them accompanied by the press.

One was Laura Esquivel, a trans sex worker from Paraguay.

She described herself as tough and made of iron.

“Soy hecho de hierro,” the 57-year-old would say. She had worked the streets since she was 15, did time in an Italian jail for cutting another sex worker in a fight, and apologized to no one, including the pope.

But somehow, the pope now knew her name.

“It’s almost like Laura has become a friend of the pope,” Rev. Andrea Conocchia told The Washington Post. Conocchia, also known as Don Andrea, is a priest in the seaside village of Torvaianica where Esquivel plied her trade.

Don Andrea had helped Esquivel and her fellow trans sex workers in the small town, 20 miles south of Rome. The town is a destination for men who increasingly bought the workers’ particular brand of company. However, as the pandemic raged in Italy, business dried up, and food and money became scarce for these women in the small town.

Some assistance for the town’s sex workers came directly from the Vatican.

Don Andrea suggested they write to the pope and thank him. He replied with a handwritten note, telling one of Esquivel’s compatriots, “Thank you very much for your email. … I respect you and accompany you with my compassion and my prayer. Anything I can help you with, please let me know.”

When vaccines became available, the women were welcomed to Paul VI Hall in the Vatican for shots, unavailable in the rest of the country to undocumented workers like them.

“They saved our lives,” Esquivel said.

At her first audience with Francis, accompanied by Don Andrea and a small group of trans women and a same-sex couple on a warm summer morning in 2022, Esquivel blurted in Italian, “I’m a transsexual from Paraguay.”

The pope smiled and told her, “You are also a child of God.”

Esquivel asked for his blessing, and he touched both her shoulders.

“God bless you,” he said.

“You, too,” Laura responded.

Francis laughed and said, “We should speak Spanish, we’re South American,” acknowledging their shared identity.

Visits with women like Esquivel became regular events.

“Groups of trans come all the time,” Francis told fellow Jesuits in Lisbon last August. “The first time they came, they were crying. I was asking them why. One of them told me, ‘I didn’t think the pope would receive me!’ Then, after the first surprise, they made a habit of coming back. Some write to me, and I email them back. Everyone is invited! I realized these people feel rejected.”

Ten days before that Vatican lunch with trans women, among a thousand underprivileged and homeless people of Rome — and the first public acknowledgment that Francis was engaged with the trans community — the Vatican had released guidance that transgender people could be baptized and serve as godparents.

Esquivel was seated directly across a table from the pontiff. The talk over plates of cannelloni was light.

“Pope Francis never criticized me or told me to change my life,” Esquivel said.

Not long after, Esquivel was diagnosed with colon cancer. Don Andrea and the Vatican took Esquivel under their wing, helping her establish residency to enroll in the National Health Service, and providing lodging in Rome while she underwent chemotherapy.

The pope asked Don Andrea often about her health.

In thanks for his help and concern, Esquivel brought homemade empanadas to the papal household, accompanied by Don Andrea. As the guards let her in, she turned to him and said, “I feel like someone.”

“Laura, you are someone,” he replied.