Colombian Cardinal Washes Feet of Trans Sex Workers

Cardinal Luis José Rueda Aparicio

Last week at Holy Thursday Mass in Bogotá, Colombia, the cardinal-archbishop did a remarkable action: as part of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, by washing the feet of sex workers, including several transgender women.

This is the second year in a row that Cardinal Luis José Rueda Aparicio perfomred the traditional ritual action imitating the servant-leadership of Jesus at the Last Supper. When the ritual was added to the Holy Thursday liturgy after the Second Vatican Council, originally only men were chose for foot-washing, but with the passage of time, women were included in this symbolic action in many places.  Pope Francis had expanded the category of participants by washing the feet of prisoners and homeless people.  (However, this year, Pope Leo broke with Francis’ example by washing only the feet of 12 priests.)

According to a them.us, the cardinal, who was appointed by Francis, went to the Santa Fe neighborhood of the capital,  a police-supervised “tolerance zone” for sex work to perform the ritual. The news article also reported that the cardinal used the occasion to speak out against discrimination, saying:

“What societies do through discrimination is fracture. They create a kind of caste system that has long since been abolished and has no place in society. We are all accepted in the House of the Lord.”

Aparicio initiated the tradition last year to honor  Sara Millerey, a trans woman who had recently been murdered. At the time trans woman Alexandra Ramírez  said,“I found the event truly spectacular because more than anything, it served as an opportunity for us girls to make ourselves known to society, and to help people understand that, simply because we are trans women, we are no different from anyone else.”

This year, Valentina Rojas, one of the trans woman whose feet had been washed by the cardinal commented said the experience made her feel “happy [and] beloved,” adding, “It was truly something beautiful,” and adding that it made her feel that the Catholic Church welcomed her by signaling that “It doesn’t matter if you are transgender.”

At New Ways Ministry, we have always called on bishops and church leaders to meet with and dialogue with LGBTQ+ people.  The absence of such dialogue was painfully obvious when the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Dignitas Infinita in 2024 which listed gender transition as a grave violation of human dignity, and in 2025 when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops updated their their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic hospitals in which they advise against allowing Catholic hospitals to provide gender-affirming care. Cardinal Rueda’s example of foot-washing provides a diametrically opposed example of how church leaders can and should encounter LGBTQ+ people.

How much different would the Catholic Church be if our pastors, bishops, cardinals, and the pope regularly washed the feet of LGBTQ+ people?  A lot.

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, April 10, 2026

You can watch a news story about the event on Noticias Uno’s YouTube video for April 2, 2026.  The segment on the foot-washing ceremony begins at the 28:18 mark. The newscast was produced in Spanish, though some web browsers may do automatic translation.