Laura Esquibel, the trans woman with her faith restored: 'I hope the new Pope accepts us as we are'

She met seven times with the Pope. She holds no ecclesiastical office but her photo in the chapel where Pope Francis was laid in state went global. Her relationship with the Pontiff helped her regain her faith and quelled her feelings of exclusion. Laura Esquibel is a trans woman, originally from Paraguay, but she has lived in Italy for 34 years. She appears for her interview on Rome's busy Degli Scipioni street sporting a red jacket with matching velvet cap. Around her neck there hangs a black rosary blessed by the late Pope Francis.

"I come from the dentist, I hate it," she says as she quickly gulps down her espresso in two shakes. The cancer treatment that affected her digestive system caused her to lose many of her teeth. The same tumour that almost killed her was also the origin of her relationship with the Holy Father.

"I felt that the Church was closing doors on me because I was transgender," says Laura. At the beginning of the pandemic, affected by financial troubles, she sought help from several churches. "They closed the doors on us" Until one, Father Andrea, on the outskirts of the Italian capital, welcomed not only her but also a good number of Latin American transsexual women.

There she met Sister Geneviève Jeanningros, a nun from the order of the Hermanitas de Jesús, a friend of Francis and the one in charge of arranging his meetings with minority groups. She is the same nun who caught everyone's attention on the first day of the Pope's body lying in state when she skipped protocol to pay her respects for some considerable time in front of his coffin.

"He was a very humble person, for him we were all children of God", Laura smiles as she talks about Francis. "I asked him to forgive me for being a transsexual", she continues. She recalls his blunt reply verbatim: "I don't have to forgive you, nor does God have to forgive you. You are a human being like any other, I can't judge you." She adds: "He was unique. For me he was a father, a brother. He was peaceful, calm. When I came out after talking with him, I thought: 'My God, how nice, let's hope there's another opportunity to talk to him'. And thank God I had the chance to talk with him seven times."

However, in 2023 the appearance of a tumour in her stomach changed her life. "I was desperate, they told me they didn't know how much time I had left," she says with tears in her eyes as she travels back to that day. "I told Father Andrea that I wanted to talk to Francis to ask him to pray for me," she says. That was the third time she got to speak with him and that was the day she regained her faith. It was an unhurried meeting, lasting over an hour, in which Laura shared her fears with the Pope.

"He grabbed me by the head, prayed for me and said: 'You're not going to die, I'm going to die first'," she remembers with some emotion. "He said 'my daughter, my daughter'. He didn't treat me like a man, but like a woman," she insists. "Don't worry, you're going to paradise. Don't think you're going somewhere else, the other place doesn't exist because we are all sinners." A phrase that remains etched in her memory. "I am a sinner," is what Francis told her. "That is something I will never forget."

When the Pope died, Laura was asleep. A phone call dragged her out of bed. On the other end, her friend Minerva was crying as she told her: "Pope Francis has died." "I hung up the phone and lay in bed thinking. I didn't want to believe it."

"The day went by and at night I started crying and praying. I was sick for three days. But this is life, today we are here and tomorrow we don't know." Geneviève accompanied her to the chapel. It was the second day of official mourning and the crowds were larger than on the first day. They did not queue to enter and were taken directly to the coffin. "We were told we could stand there, pray for ten minutes and then stand for five minutes in front of the body. I knelt down, prayed and we went to look at him."

Then a shutter clicked and a photo of the moment spread like wildfire around the world. The image going so viral prevented her from attending the funeral as she had hoped. She stayed far away, fleeing the media attention. She commented that she was receiving calls from journalists she did not know asking if she was in attendance, if she and sister Geneviève stayed in the background. She is going to wait a good while before visiting Francis in Santa Maria Maggiore, where he has been laid to rest.

The Pope's mark on Laura's life will live on: "They discriminate against us for being trans women, but I don't care what anyone else says. The important thing is that I was with Francis, I took hold of him, I hugged him, I kissed his hand, he kissed mine. That is something I will always remember."

Now, she is worried about the future of the Catholic church. The arrival of a Pontiff with a more conservative stance towards the LGTBQ+ community would complicate her relationship with the Vatican: "I would feel left outside, but not of the Church. I will always go to church," she says. The future is uncertain, but she would like to see a Latin American pope who would follow in Francis' footsteps, although she acknowledges that that would be difficult: "I don't think there will ever be a pope like him again. His humility, everything he did to help, like setting up a clinic for poor people. I used to go there when I had no money for medicine," she recalls. Even so, whoever arrives, she is clear: "Pope Francis' faith has stayed with me and no one will take that away from me."