Dear Listeners,
This week on Whiplash, I had the privilege of speaking with Sister Luisa Derouen, whose ministry with transgender Catholics spans more than 26 years. Long before conversations about trans identity entered mainstream Catholic discourse, Luisa was accompanying trans people through profound questions of faith, survival, conscience, and belonging. For decades, she has quietly reminded people that they do not have to abandon themselves in order to remain loved by God.
Our conversation touches on Catholic spirituality, accompaniment, gender identity, conscience, and the deep wounds many transgender Catholics carry from religious life. But it is also a conversation about hope: about what becomes possible when someone meets another person not with fear or ideology, but with compassion and curiosity. Luisa’s spirituality is deeply shaped by Vatican II, by mercy, and by the conviction that authenticity and holiness are not opposites.
Because Luisa’s story is so rich and expansive, I also want to encourage listeners to spend time with two excellent profiles about her work. Outreach published a beautiful long-form article titled “No Body Now But Yours,” and my friend Leah Raidt wrote a profile for Queer Kentucky titled “Trans ally, Catholic nun: Sister Luisa Derouen’s 26-Year mission of quiet resistance.” Both pieces help illuminate the extraordinary depth of her accompaniment and the lives she has impacted over the years.
There is still so much work to do. Trans Catholics continue to face isolation, misunderstanding, exclusion, and fear within the church. But I think it’s important to recognize what it means that, for more than two decades, someone like Luisa was there anyway — telling people they were not alone, that there was nothing inherently wrong with them, and that someone who represented the church loved them and supported them. That kind of accompaniment matters. Sometimes survival begins with a single person willing to say: God loves you, and you do not have to disappear in order to belong.
One of the things that stayed with me after this interview is Luisa’s insistence that God is not absent from our becoming. For so many transgender Catholics, the struggle has never simply been about identity in the abstract, but about whether honesty, embodiment, and survival can coexist with faith. Luisa has spent decades answering that question with her life.
For those wanting to learn more about how to accompany trans people, check out Fortunate Families and the training Luisa created with them.
Thank you, as always, for listening and supporting this work with your paid subscriptions.
— Max
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