Amid Oppression, India’s Catholics Provide Sanctuary for Trans People

Transgender Indians protesting the new law.

Against the backdrop of a fight for fundamental rights for transgender people in India, the Catholic Church is building a refuge for the local trans community. In Kadarkarai Sagaya Madha Church in Ennore, Chennai, church leaders have instituted a “Catholic Desk” that offers job placement assistance and professional counseling for transgender people. It is just one link in a chain that is forming across India.

Just a few weeks after Kadarkarai Sagaya Madha Church unveiled this desk, the first ministry of its kind in the archdiocese, the Indian Parliament passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, according to a news article in Religion Unplugged. This act stripped away what fundamental rights transgender persons achieved in India with the 2014 Supreme Court ruling in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India, which “guaranteed the right to self-identify one’s gender.” 

The news article reports that the new amendment undermines these rights in several ways: 

“The new amendment [requires] the approval of a government-appointed medical board…before the state will legally recognize a transgender person’s identity. The new law also narrows the legal definition of transgender so radically that trans men, non-binary people and many who did not fit into socio-culturally legible categories like hijra or aravani (terms meaning third-gender and usually referring to transgender women, intersex individuals or eunuchs) are no longer recognized under Indian law at all.”

International and scientific communities condemn the amendment. Amnesty International calls it “a serious setback for human rights in India,” while medical groups call it “scientifically inaccurate, medically unsound, and incompatible with contemporary standards of transgender healthcare.” The church’s quiet push to aid members of the trans community seems a lot more intentional in the face of this new law.

Sister Prema Chowallur

The church in Ennore isn’t the only place the Catholic Church is becoming a refuge for Indian transgender persons, either. In Northeast India, Sister Prema Chowallur of the Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod has been ministering to the Hijra community since 2016. According to Chowallur, this ministry began when she sat on a bus next to a transgender woman no one else would sit beside. This led her to open the Rainbow Home of the Seven Sisters, a shelter that also provides skills training and advocates for transgender children being admittedto the formal education system. The Archdiocese of Guwahati gave the home its backing. 

Chowullar’s approach to transgender ministry is “deliberately theological,” and uses the same language Pope Francis used when he stressed that the church must minister to those at the “peripheries.” Chowullar believes “this is the call of the Church today, to work for the rejected, discarded, and marginalized.” 

In Ennore, Father Leo Joseph leads the Catholic Desk initiative, with Inba Ignatius, founder of the Snegidhan Snegidhi Trust. The Trust has a long history providing shelter and support to transgender people in the region. Ignatius is from a Catholic family, but felt isolated from the church following her transition. She built the Snegidhan Snegidhi Trust “outside institutional structures.” With both Pope Leo and Pope Francis rpreaching kindness and care to all, Ignatius now sits on an eight-member committee that includes priests and religious sisters.

Indian Church leaders are quick to emphasize they are helping to protect human dignity and providing spiritual accompaniment. Navigating the Hindu-nationalist political climate in India is complicated when offering shelter to a group that is also becoming more legally exposed. To trans Catholics in India, however, the rhetoric matters less than the existence of the Catholic Desk itself.

–Lynnzee Dick, New Ways Ministry, July 25, 2026