Lives in transition. Only now can I say I am myself

Testimony* by Cristina Lapedota di Speranza, Network of Transgender Christians and Zaccheo Puglia - Rete Christiani Queer

I was baptized with the name of Nicola, but from an early age that name and that sex I never accepted, nor heard of mine: he did not belong to me!

But then I did not understand the reality I lived well. Like all children I started attending the catechism in the parish. I remember with nostalgia my childhood spent there: I also carried out the service at the altar as a clerics and this made me feel an integral part of that community, I felt valued.

It was around eleven years that my inner perceptions began to emerge more evidently: I started to warn attraction towards my peers. I thought I confided myself with my parish priest. After the confessions with him I convinced myself that I was in serious sin, and over time I felt the negative judgment of his and the whole parish ever stronger on my skin. I then decided to get away.

Towards the age of fourteen I lived a long period of solitude: I was increasingly exploring my gender identity, my family did not understand me and I had no support from anyone. I lived moments of great loss and deep malaise that led me to try suicide several times.

Despite everything, however, something within me was increasingly evident and clear: I was a woman and I would have been good only if I had affirmed the gender identity to which I felt I belonged.

At twenty years, therefore, I decided to start my path of genre affirmation: it was a very hard and great suffering period not only physical but also spiritual: the surgical interventions were very painful and the suffering lived I interpreted them as a punishment of God for what I was doing. But if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have been myself. All this phase, however, was of fundamental importance for me because it led me to be the transgender woman who are today.

None of those physical interventions and changes, however, gave me the complete acceptance of myself. I kept not being serene inside! There was still a war inside me, I still missed something, but I didn't understand what.

Educated Christianly to marriage and the family, and believing a lot in these values, despite the secular and religious laws they precluded me any possibility of realizing them, I did not give up my desire to seek a companion for life and to share with him a relationship of faithful, lasting and mutual dedication. For many years I have had a life partner and, with ups and downs (as with all couples), we are still very tied and important for each other. We helped and supported in many moments of difficulty and we came out of it.

The same Christian formation received in the parish during childhood pushed me not to focus only on myself, but to worry about others in difficulty that, thanks to my personal experience, I could have helped in the moment of need. Unfortunately, the transgender friends who have not made it and I bring them all in the heart are not few: the certainty that they are now all in the infinite and unconditional embrace of God. This has also led me to collaborate with the anti -discrimination center of my city, where I take care of responding to the H24 active help counter. It is very important for me, as a person and as a Christian to return some of the help that I have received from God in recent years, a God that now not only I no longer see as a judge, but I feel as a presence that always accompanies me on my journey.

In fact, therefore, I have always felt Christian, even if not "practicing". Was this that perhaps I still lacked: live this feeling of my feeling with other people?

Then an unexpected fact occurred: last year Alessandro, a believing transgender friend, made me get in touch with the group Zaccheo Puglia, network of Apulian Christians. The boys were organizing an ecumenical prayer vigil to commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance Together with two pastoral workers with LGBT+ people and a Waldensian shepherd in my city. Now God knocked directly on my door: I was already forty -eight years old. What did I have to answer him now?

The heart told me to accept and support Alessandro: We both have made our testimony of transgender Christian people. On that occasion I also knew a couple of parents of an LGBT+ person and Don Angelo, a priest with a big heart and open to all unconditionally, of which I had already heard.

It was an unexpectedly beautiful and touching evening and that heavy moral judgment that I had always heard on my skin when I was in church began to vanish.

From that day I began to attend the group initiatives Zaccheo, in particular the online prayer "On the Sicomoro", organized every Monday evening.

With the group Zaccheo I started to pray again, to read and meditate the Gospel. My faith, crushed for many years under the weight of the moral judgment, as a fire under the ash has gradually resulted in strength, until I started trying the desire to participate in the mass and approaching communion. This happened on Christmas day of last year: two people had taken me by the hand and brought me back to the church before God. It was then that I understood the nature of the inner malaise that I still feel, despite my transition path: not to be able to reconcile my identity of gender with faith in God.

Only now that I have found my faith, in fact, can I say that it is called "Zaccheo", like the group of LGBT+ believing people who have given me back that peace and inner serenity that I missed.

So, thanks group Zaccheo, Don Angelo, Luigi and Valeria! And thanks also to all those who today no longer have prejudices towards people like me within the Catholic community.

Only now can I say I am myself.

* Testimonial collected thanksas part of the “Born twice” project, with which the volunteers of Jonathan Project they want to tell the journey of faith of transgender people and their families. In May 2025, on the occasion of thePrayer vigils to overcome homotransbiphobia, some of these stories will be collected by Jonathan's tent in a free printed booklet that will tell the story of the faith journeys of transgender, Catholic and evangelical people, and their families in the various churches. A collection of testimonies with which we want to weave a bridge of knowledge between these two often distant worlds, to help break down walls and prejudices. To read the testimonies we have already collected click onhttps://www.gionata.org/tag/nati-due-volte/. If you want to add yours, write to tendedigionata@gmail.com Word of mouth