Sister Luisa Deroeun has been a nun for 64 years. She’s spent 26 years ministering nationally as a spiritual director and advocate for the trans community. Her writings and teachings include simple, profound truths like transgender people are who they say they are, transitioning is a spiritual journey, and that transpeople have much to teach us about living with integrity. Sister Luisa has much to teach us, too. At 82 years old, she comfortably holds the seat of wise elder. After spending an afternoon with her at the Dominican Sisters of Peace in Central, Kentucky, I enthusiastically add my name to the long list of gender-expansive folks who testify to Sr. Luisa being the real deal, a true embodiment of allyship.

Being a woman religious is the core of Sr. Luisa’s identity. She says she shares, “the same kind of love-hate relationship to the institutional Catholic Church that a lot of people have.” 

When asked how she can stay in this dysfunctional church, a question she gets often, she tells folks, “It’s in my DNA.” She claims the seed of her call to minister to the trans community was born out of a challenging and traumatic time in the mid 1970s, in which she experienced blatant maltreatment, judgement and abuse. For the first time in her life, she found herself “at the bottom of a deep, dark, terrifying hole.” 

Her prayer through this dark night of the soul was, “God help me not waste this suffering. Teach me what I am supposed to know about myself.”  In 1999, Sr. Luisa met her first trans person, and came to see how her suffering had uniquely prepared her for connection with the trans community. 

She said, “I could just relate with being made invisible and condemned for something I could do absolutely nothing about. God put love in my heart for them [trans people] out the starting gate.”

Sr. Luisa’s humility is refreshing and palpable. When she first started to offer spiritual direction to trans folks, she would disclose, “I want to be here for you and I don’t know what that looks like. It’s for you to say to me, how can I be a caring, loving presence for you?” My research suggests her approach was effective, because trans people repeatedly comment on Sr. Luisa’s ability to “self-empty” and “outpour” her love. 

I asked her to clarify how the spiritual concept and experience of “self-emptying” was different than burn out or overextending oneself. She marveled in the question for a moment and then said, “What comes to my mind is that overextending, burning out, is what happens to us when we think it’s we who are doing the work. When we’re putting much more focus on ourselves, that we’re the savior, we’re the Messiah, we’re the ones that these people can’t live without. Then you get burned out. But self-emptying is kenosis. It’s just being available to whatever God wants to do. It is a kind of dying. But it’s so full of love.” 

With this explanation, the part of me wary that Sr. Luisa’s motives might harbor even a tinge of “savior complex” evaporated. She went on to say, “Oh, and the other piece is there’s not a master plan. It’s just, “God, give me enough light to show me the next step. What do you want me to do? The next step. And then once I step there, then you’ll show me what the next step is. It’s faith. It’s living by faith and trust.” 

Sr. Luisa walks her walk, y’all. When trans people would ask her to speak with their families, she always said yes, even though it was very risky. “Not all families were accepting of what I said. Some of them were very opposed and think I was speaking of the devil. They could easily go to the bishop and report me, but no one did.” 

Sr. Luisa remarked that many people mistakenly think nuns are clergy. “We’re not, we’re laity. But you know what, if they think I’m clergy, than that gives me leverage. More power, I’ll let it be. So I think the fact that I was a nun, even though some of them disagreed with me, it still had leverage. And so I was always willing to take that risk because it made such a difference. It helped in those early days. It really helped to normalize trans people.”

In addition to spiritual companioning over 250 trans folks, Sr. Luisa has been educating Catholics about gender-expansive people for decades. Assuming Queer Kentucky readers hold a baseline level of education, respect and regard for the existence, dignity and rights of trans people, I asked Sr. Luisa what is it that she wants trans and non-binary people to know about Catholics. Her answer is this: “Not all Catholics are against you. There are many, many who want to learn, who want to support, who want to affirm, who want to do the right thing. Don’t paint all Catholics with one big brush.” 

She endorses the work of LGBTQ+ Catholic organizations like Outreach, Dignity, New Ways Ministry, and Fortunate Families, noting, “all of those were founded with a gay-lesbian focus. Trans was not in the picture at all when those were founded. But now, they are on board and trying their best to raise awareness, I think.”

Sr. Luisa is careful to distinguish between “God’s people who are the Church” and “the hierarchy,” meaning the bishops, priests, and orthodoxy police with whom she spent many years purposely trying to be invisible so that she might carry out her work ministering to transgender people under the radar, to avoid getting herself or her community in trouble. 

It is not lost on her that the herculean efforts required to be visible to the trans community, while remaining “invisible” in the public eye was giving major “closeted” vibes. In a number of ways, her life  mirrored LGBTQ+ experience — having to watch her back, watch who she said what to, and being misjudged and criticized. 

As trans visibility and Sr. Luisa’s ministry grew, staying in the proverbial closet got harder and harder. Her prioress gave her permission to write articles and accept interviews under the conditions that she use a pseudonym and not disclose the name or location of her congregation. 

In 2014, when Sr. Luisa was doing her work from the St. Catherine Motherhouse in Central, Kentucky, articles about a mysterious “Sister Monica” began to surface, pointing more trans people toward a safe, affirming resource. However, Sr. Luisa was painfully aware of the contradiction she was living — companioning others through coming out and transitioning while she herself hid behind the guise of “Sister Monica.”  For years, the agonizing question, of which she could not discern a clear answer was, “Is my silence cowardice or prudence?”

Sr. Luisa’s hard-won advice for when you find yourself anguishing is this:“You just sit with it. You sit with it and you hold it all every day…I don’t understand when I don’t have to understand…hold the ambivalence and the ambiguity and just be content with being firmly planted in midair.” Experience taught her not to make big decisions until there was clarity. She recollects, “Once it got to where the bishops were really starting to speak out with very ignorant, dangerous things, I couldn’t stay silent anymore.”

In 2018, Sr. Luisa made the decision to go public. She asked no one’s permission. In her words, she “stood at the edge of the cliff and jumped. And I did not know if there was going to be anything to catch me. And I had to be prepared. I had to be prepared to leave the community. I had to be prepared to leave religious life. I had to be prepared for whatever.” Sr. Luisa says coming out was “without a doubt the most consequential, powerful, terrifying, graced, freeing decision of my life.” She recollects, “I remember I was standing in the kitchen saying, ‘this is what it feels like not to hide. I don’t have to hide. I’m not hiding anymore. I don’t have to hide. I’m not afraid. I am not afraid.’ From the day I made that decision, I was never afraid again.”

Learn more about Sr. Luisa Derouen by visiting: https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/luisa-derouen. 

 

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Leah Raidt (they/she) is an writer/performer, award-winning filmmaker, trauma-informed meditation teacher, and LGBTQ+ wedding officiant currently based in Louisville, KY. www.LeahRaidt.com