Every November, Pope Francis sat down to a simple meal with more than 1,000 of Rome’s poorest and most marginalized residents, at the annual centerpiece of the World Day of the Poor. This year’s communal lunch, held by Pope Leo XIV, meant to express dignity and solidarity but was recast online as a culture-war skirmish, with dueling narratives that had little to do with the 1,300 people actually in the room.
World Day of the Poor is an observance Pope Francis established to urge the Church, and society more broadly, to resist treating the poor as peripheral.
The Vatican repeatedly describes the meal as an act of closeness and a chance for the Pope to sit at the same tables as people who are homeless, migrants, elderly, and isolated; those living in shelters; and families who struggle to afford basic necessities. An article from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops emphasized that the purpose is “to hear the cry of the poor,” to affirm their dignity, and to remind governments and societies that poverty is not an abstraction — it has faces, names, and stories.
Every year since its establishment, roughly 1,300 guests are brought into the Paul VI Hall for a meal with the Pope, where they eat the same food and enjoy each other’s company. The hall fills with volunteers, social outreach groups, and parish networks, who accompany the people they serve. The meal is intentionally modest: a simple menu of vegetable lasagna, breaded chicken with potatoes, and a small Neapolitan dessert.
This act of hospitality that is grounded in a clear, well established purpose was flattened into two competing culture-war narratives that had almost nothing to do with what the World Day of the Poor actually represents.
Beginning in 2020, Pope Francis, often working through his papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, began supporting a small community of “transgender” sex workers in Torvaianica, a poor seaside parish outside Rome, with emergency money, food and later access to COVID-19 vaccines. Over time, that relationship grew into repeated meetings and invitations to Vatican events, including the World Day of the Poor lunch.
In 2025, Pope Leo XIV continued that practice: Roughly 50 “transgender” parishioners from Torvaianica, accompanied by their priest, were among the poor and socially excluded guests invited to the Paul VI Hall. They were seated together at ordinary tables.
On one side, critics argued that the “transgender” participants had been “pushed back” or “snubbed.” Some pointed to the group’s seating in the back-left quadrant of the Paul VI Hall and the absence of a personal greeting from the Pope as evidence of exclusion or discomfort from Church leadership.
According to Cardinal Krajewski, the head-table places were assigned randomly, and the group’s late arrival meant many of them, like many other attendees, never received a personal greeting from the Pope, a situation he framed as a matter of logistics rather than special preference or an intentional snub.
“The nineteen people at the table with the Holy Father were chosen at random by him at the last moment, after the Angelus,” Krajewski told The Daily Compass.
On the other side of the debate, one widely shared post on X (nearly 300,000 views) asserted that “Pope Leo will meet with 5 transgender activists,” describing the encounter as a Vatican “scandal.”
The post was not entirely inaccurate in noting that several men who say they are women would be present, but its wording led many readers to assume that the Pope was holding a private meeting with a small group of activists.
In fact, the five individuals referenced were part of the larger parish community from Torvaianica that has taken part in World Day of the Poor events for several years with Pope Francis, among the roughly 1,300 people invited to the annual lunch. According to organizers, there was no separate meeting with the group. They attended the meal in the same manner as the other guests.
Neither version of the online dispute reflects what occurred at the event, and the competing narratives only drew attention away from the stated purpose of the World Day of the Poor lunch.
The faithful have a responsibility to approach such headlines and assertions about the Holy Father with caution, particularly when they imply motives not supported by the available facts.
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