The Weekly Lift - November 16, 2023

This week's selection of articles and headlines*:

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Occupied West Bank - Divided By Faith, United By Fear

The New York Times (US) reports that "as Moish Feiglin pulls up to his settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he points to an eight-foot-tall concrete slab blocking the middle of the road. “That’s new,” he says.

He slowly drives around it and nods his head to more security barriers and heavily armed soldiers peering from behind the entrance gate. “And so is that and that and that.”

In the past month, his settlement, Tekoa, has turned into “an army base,” he says, which goes against his personal code. “I don’t have rock-proof glass on my car windows,” he says. “I don’t want rock-proof glass.” “But you have to understand what people are preparing for,” he adds. “They are preparing for 200 terrorists to come in.”

The West Bank, an area many times the size of Gaza and complicated in its own way, is once again a flashpoint, and all sides are clearly on edge. While the world is increasingly critical of Israel for its bombardment of Gaza, deep concern is also rising about the actions of the Israeli military and Jewish settlers in the West Bank, a contested patchwork of Palestinian areas and Israeli settlements like Tekoa that most of the world considers illegal.

Jewish settlers of all political stripes are arming themselves, and extremists among them have attacked Palestinians and driven hundreds off their land. At the same time, there have been more Israeli military raids, more violent protests, more arrests and more Palestinian attacks on Israelis this past month than there have been in any similar period in years.

The result is an increasingly combustible atmosphere where people are divided by faith and united by fear, and just about everyone’s humanity is being tested. “I’m very confused inside,” says Abu Adam, a Palestinian tour guide who asked to be identified by his patronymic, afraid he could be “socially isolated” — or hurt — for expressing moderate views. “We’re suffering, they’re suffering. Everything has stopped.” “And it’s only going to get worse,” he adds.

The story of Moish Feiglin and Abu Adam, two professionals whose lives have been upended by the violence, reveals how deeply both sides are afraid even if the power dynamic between them is vastly unequal. As an Israeli, Mr. Feiglin can’t pry his mind away from the Oct. 7 attacks.

The scale and horror in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered an estimated 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and some brutally, has led him, by his own admission, to “close off” part of his heart.

He doesn’t like carrying a Glock. But he is allowed to, and so he does. The Israeli Army has been assigned to protect his community. Still, he warily scans the open hills separating his settlement from Arab areas and begins to question many of the fundamental things he once believed in.

“I’m struggling,” he says. “Six weeks ago, I was arguing for peace, I was sending my kids to an Israeli-Palestinian summer camp, I was shopping in the village at Arab stores and embracing the ideology that went with that. And now I’m like: ‘What’s next? Can we really go back to that? Was I, in the past, too na?ve?’”

Abu Adam used to participate in grass-roots peace efforts and also wonders if his old attitude is now out of date. He embodies the day-to-day difficulties of a Palestinian living under an Israeli occupation that leaves him stateless, curtails his movements and makes it illegal for him or any other Palestinian civilian to carry a firearm.

The Israeli bombing of Gaza, 60 miles away, has killed more than 11,000 people, according to the enclave’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas. The images he sees on television of fellow Palestinians, bleeding and dying, mourning and overwhelmed with sorrow, he says, have hardened him.

“We’ve lost everything,” he says. “And sometimes, you just want to escape. But there’s nowhere to go.” The two men live within sight of each other, share similar thoughts, even do some of the same kind of work. But they’ve never met and in the occupied West Bank, they inhabit different worlds.

On the morning of Oct. 7, Mr. Feiglin was praying in a synagogue in Tekoa, and Abu Adam was leading a tour in Jericho. He was guiding an American family around what may be the world’s oldest city when his phone started buzzing in his pocket. “I looked down at my messages,” Abu Adam says. “All I saw was: Cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel.”

His upcoming clients were backing out of trips booked for this autumn, and the ones with him were so terrified by the news that they insisted on leaving Jericho immediately. When he got home that night and collapsed on the sofa, he was horrified by what he saw on television. “It was terrible to see people killed like that,” he said. “Hamas made a mistake.” But, he was quick to add, “too much pressure causes an explosion.”

Up the hill, Mr. Feiglin watched his community transform before his eyes. Anyone who had a gun grabbed it, and a civilian guard force instantly formed. Tekoa is one of the 130 or so West Bank settlements, built on land Israel seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Many are like islands, plunked down in the middle of Arab areas. They are often criticized, even among many Israelis, as the biggest obstacle to peace. Roughly half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, alongside an estimated 2.7 million Palestinians. The settlements reflect a wide range of politics and lifestyles, from ultranationalist communities to more moderate ones focused on agriculture.

A half-hour south of Jerusalem and with 4,300 residents, Tekoa is somewhere in the middle of the settler political spectrum. Known by some as “the hippie settlement” for its sizable contingent of artists and peace activists, it’s also home to right-wing supporters who advocate taking more Palestinian land.

So far there’s been little violence around here, and Mr. Feiglin calls the recent settler attacks in other areas “reprehensible,” “against Jewish values” and “very, very fringe.” Such aggression, he says, clearly contrasts with the modicum of interdependence that Tekoa and neighboring Arab villages had maintained, out of necessity more than anything else.

Before Oct. 7, scores of Palestinian men worked on construction sites in the settlement, which, with its tract housing and squiggly streets, looks like an American subdivision. Some settlers, like Mr. Feiglin, ventured into Arab areas to buy hardware or get their cars fixed.

Sometimes Jews and Arabs shared meals, played music together or gathered with their families at a campground near Bethlehem. None of this is happening now.

Mr. Feiglin is a therapist, musician and desert guide. He specializes in breath work and music therapy. But with tourists fleeing Israel, his tourism business, like Abu Adam’s, has dried up.

Both are running short on cash. Both are worried about their children. Mr. Feiglin’s 10-year-old daughter was riding to school this spring, he says, when a group of Palestinians attacked her bus with rocks. She’s still shaken by it. As for Abu Adam, he worries that his kids will be the ones throwing rocks.

It was for his children’s sake, Abu Adam says, that he had joined local peace efforts in which Palestinians met with Israelis and discussed ways to live together. As a young man, he had been jailed for participating in violent protests against the expansion of Tekoa, which he and other Palestinians said was built illegally on their land. “But the problem I faced in my life,” he says, “I didn’t want my kids to face.”

Mr. Feiglin, 39, is a bit of a contradiction. Australian-born, he moved to the West Bank eight years ago. He says he enjoys spending time with ordinary Palestinians and promoting peace and coexistence. But doesn’t the very existence of his settlement only complicate peace and coexistence? “It’s a question I’ve asked myself,” he says. “My presence in the settlement won’t change facts on the ground.”

He chose to live in Tekoa, he says, for its sense of community and the intoxicating effects of living on the edge of a spectacular desert. He finds himself thinking about his Palestinian acquaintances like Ismail, a hardware store owner whom he used to see all the time and now hasn’t seen for weeks. “All these micro-interactions,” he says, his voice trailing off during a conversation in his kitchen. “I don’t know how far this is going to rewind us.” “But trusting would be a risk, right?” says his wife, Adena Firstman, sitting next to him. “We’re, like, in survival mode.”

Mr. Feiglin cracks an almond between his teeth and answers, “We’re in Rambo mode.” No place may better demonstrate “Rambo mode” than a hilltop near Tekoa that Jewish settlers recently seized in clear violation of Israeli law. Mr. Feiglin drives there along a bumpy road, past yawning canyons dotted with scrub brush and white stones. The Dead Sea shimmers in the distance. Beyond stand the red rock mountains of Jordan.

The landscape feels ancient, but the road itself is freshly bulldozed. “At any other time,” Mr. Feiglin says, “the settlers who made this wouldn’t be able to get away with it.” The hilltop is guarded by four young men with matted hair, filthy jeans and the sidelocks of the ultra-Orthodox. Their gear: a few radios, an ammo box, pistol clips, a prayer book, long knives and hunks of half-eaten challah. A belt-fed machine gun sits on sandbags, trained on the craggy hills.

“We should just shoot them in the head,” says Meir Kinarty, one of the young men, speaking of Palestinian protesters. “Only a bullet in their brains will make them learn.”

A reservist soldier, Andrew Silberman, who grew up in suburban Chicago, is also stationed on the hilltop. “This is totally illegal,” he says of the outpost, but he also says it’s his duty to help protect the area.

Like those of many others, Mr. Silberman’s feelings are complicated. He seems turned off by the bloodthirsty bravado of the young men strutting around with their knives. He says he understands how all the violence coursing through the West Bank, which has been rocked by major uprisings before, can radicalize people on both sides.

“But I don’t agree that hate should be the response,” he says. When his shift ends, Mr. Silberman takes the belt-fed machine gun with him, uneasy about leaving it with the young men.

Abu Adam, from the rooftop of the home he built with his tour guide earnings, can see, with a squint, this same hilltop. He laughs when asked what’s the way forward.“It’s not clear,” he says. “But we have to keep looking.”

International Relations: Australia And China Patch Things Up

The Economist (UK) reports that "when Anthony Albanese shook hands with Xi Jinping in Beijing on November 6th, it marked the first time in seven years that an Australian prime minister had travelled to China to meet its leader. For much of the intervening period the two countries’ economic and political relations were badly ruptured. Yet in the Great Hall of the People Mr Xi declared that China and Australia had “embarked on the right path of improvement”.

Mr Albanese, for his part, said that Australia supported China’s growth and “ongoing engagement with the world”. That his visit came on the 50th anniversary of Australia’s opening of diplomatic relations with Communist-run China was intended by both sides to symbolise a significant step towards normalisation.

There were several causes of the rupture, but at root was China’s desire to bend Australia to its will. Its rulers were angered by Australia’s deepening security co-operation with America, its longtime ally, in response to China’s growing assertiveness towards Taiwan, the seas around it and beyond. Australia’s decision to bar Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, increased the friction.

So did the umbrage Australia’s then conservative government took at signs of Chinese “sharp” power, including interference and surveillance orchestrated through the Chinese embassy in Canberra and within Australia’s universities and large Chinese diaspora. As Australia grew increasingly hawkish towards China, in late 2020 that Chinese embassy handed a laundry list of grievances to the Australian press. China also froze ministerial exchanges between the two countries and slapped embargoes on some Australian exports, including barley, timber, coal, sugar, wine and lobsters.

Though China is Australia’s biggest market, this chastisement failed. Far from turning on their government, put-upon Australian businesses backed it in the row. Many of them found new markets for their products. Australia meanwhile embarrassed China by bringing cases against it at the wto. And China’s own businesses suffered from the embargoes, even as the Chinese economy started to flag as a result of disruptions related to the pandemic and also to a property crash and weak foreign?investment.

A change of government in Australia last year offered an occasion for China to try a softer approach. Regular ministerial dialogues are expected to resume. Most of China’s embargoes are being lifted, with the remainder expected to come off soon. Cheng Lei, a Chinese-born Australian journalist who was picked up in China by state goons in 2020 on trumped-up charges of espionage, has been released.

Many in Australia think this has straightforwardly demonstrated that standing up to Chinese bullying pays off. Others, however, warn of the insidious nature of Chinese coercion, which will not end, even if it may take a different form towards Australia. Days after Ms Cheng’s release, Australia’s government renewed a Chinese lease on the strategic port of Darwin (in opposition, Mr Albanese had called the lease a “grave error of judgment”).

The government denies that this represented a quid pro quo. Yet Euan Graham of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra sees a “loss of discipline” in the government’s handling of China. He suggests there is now a risk it will give too much away.

The charge is probably premature. Mr Albanese’s mantra is that Australia and China must “co-operate where we can, disagree where we must”. So far, that seems to be working. But it is wrong to hope, as some do, that China will settle for an equitable relationship with Australia. As Benjamin Herscovitch at the Australian National University in Canberra notes, China’s conciliatory moves in recent months appear to be intended “to get Australia more on side with its own objectives”. These include continued Chinese access to Australia’s rare earths and other mineral resources; and Australian support for China joining the 12-country cptpp, a trade grouping.

America would be unhappy on both scores, which is another reason why Australia’s relations with China will not be easy. Mr Herscovitch predicts that America will grow ever more uncomfortable about Australia’s deep and recovering economic ties with China.

The dilemma for Australia—of leaning on America for security while, on trade, so many roads lead to China—will only sharpen. Australia has just passed a notable diplomatic test. But given Chinese coercion, Australia’s determination to resist and American goading, the normalisation moment could be rather brief."

A Successful ‘Anti-Bukele’ Criminal Justice Model In Costa Rica

El Pais (Spain) reports that "maybe it was the marijuana and cocaine she tried when she was 12. Maybe it was her abusive mother or a childhood marked by poverty and hunger. Maybe it was her ex-husband’s beatings. Erenia Cerdas isn’t really sure what led her down the wrong path and got her hooked on crack by the time she was 21. After that, everything gets hazy for Cerdas. One day, she agreed to take a package to Cocorí prison in central Costa Rica, unaware it was stuffed with marijuana. As it turns out, it was the best thing that could have happened to her.

By that point, Cerdas was homeless and begging to support herself. She had been in and out of 16 rehabilitation centers, and her three children had been taken away 10 years earlier. She has twins, who are now 19 years old, and another child who is 17.

“My life was rehab centers and drugs, rehab and drugs,” Cerdas told us when we met her at the ruins of an old church in Cartago (central Costa Rica) that was never rebuilt after the 1910 Santa Monica earthquake levelled it. In late November 2021, a friend called Cerdas (now 38) asking for a favor — he wanted her to take some “wood craft materials” to Cocorí prison for the inmate artisans to use. Cerdas agreed without hesitation.

When she entered the prison, a corrections officer inspecting the wood punched a hole in it and several small packets of pot tumbled out. Cerdas was immediately arrested, but then alarms sounded and gunshots rang out nearby. She later learned the guards had seized a much larger load of drugs being smuggled into the prison. “They used me as a decoy for the other smuggler,” said Cerdas, obviously dismayed by the experience two years later.

The court-appointed defense lawyer argued that Cerdas’ case should be handled differently because she had been tricked into the crime and was an addict who lived on the streets. The crime normally carried a prison sentence of 8-10 years, but a new provision in the penal code reduces it to 3-8 years for women who are either living in precarious conditions, have dependents, or are elderly.

The new penal code provision enables a judge to recommend punishments other than prison time. It’s a brand of restorative justice that keeps certain convicts out of jail and gives both victims and perpetrators space to make amends and restitution.

Rita Porras, a clinical psychologist from the Prevention Projects Unit at the Costa Rican Drug Institute, says it can be beneficial for drug users to know about a legal process that offers second chances. “At the end of the day, government neglect is the reason many women are in these situations,” said Zhuyem Molina, a judge who used to be a public defender and helped draft the restorative justice law. “The government should not punish people just because they’re poor.”

Restorative justice is based on a fundamentally different perspective. Punitive justice focuses on punishment and isolation, but the Costa Rican model takes a different approach. It emphasizes conflict resolution and reparation instead of condemnation.

The restorative justice law was approved in 2018 and has consistently been supported by successive governments. This law establishes a structured process involving a judge, prosecutor, psychologists, social workers, the victim (civil society, in some cases), and the offender.

To qualify for this process, three conditions must be met: it must be the first offense, carry a sentence of less than three years, and all parties must agree to this form of conflict resolution. Cases of violence against women do not qualify. An agreement must be reached within 30 days on how to repair the harm committed by the offender.

For Cerdas, the outcome was seven months in a detox center, commitment to a support group for former addicts, and two years of community service. “I went with the Genesis Foundation, which is Christ-centered, because it was only by the grace of God that I managed to crawl out of this hole,” she said.

Now she is leading a team to help newcomers to the program and has moved back in with her youngest son. “I‘ve always wanted to change my life and kick drugs. I’ve tried 16 times, but I just didn’t know how to do it and didn’t have anyone to help me.”

Costa Rica’s approach also demonstrates a strong commitment to integrating the gender perspective in courts. In Latin America, 70% of imprisoned women are incarcerated for trafficking very small amounts of drugs. “If you look closely at women in prison, you realize that locking them up actually causes more harm to society.

They’re heads of households, single mothers, vulnerable women... The cycles of crime tend to repeat in families that go hungry,” said Coletta Youngers, a senior advisor with WOLA, a research and advocacy organization advancing human rights in the Americas. “These are not the kind of dangerous people we need to keep away from society.”

Conservatives tend to have a different perspective on crime and punishment. Promoting alternatives to incarceration is anathema to people like President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Bukele’s security approach revolves around imprisoning anyone suspected of gang affiliation, resulting in the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. Politicians in Ecuador, Honduras and Colombia have embraced Bukele’s iron-fisted security policies and strict law enforcement.

Celia Medrano, a well-known Salvadoran journalist and defender of human rights, recalls efforts in 2014 to pass a similar law in her country aimed at women coerced by gang members into carrying drugs.

“We worked so hard, but we just couldn’t get the Ministry of Justice to understand the distinction between a woman who was coerced and one who wasn’t. Trying again now is totally out of the question because the country’s mindset is basically guilty until proven innocent.”

Teodoro Bermúdez, a Costa Rican prosecutor who has embraced his country’s approach, said, “We still have many detractors here in Costa Rica who say we’re soft on crime, but people are always afraid of something new and different.”

Jovanna Calderón Altamirano, the head of Costa Rica’s Office of Restorative Justice, believes that criticism of restorative justice is often rooted in ignorance and driven by “punitive populism.”

“People think that these processes are super lenient and all about benefitting the accused. But it’s not like that — we’re not going easy or letting them off the hook. These processes are actually well-regulated and closely monitored, with clear responsibilities to make things right and fix the harm caused.”

Last year, 2,379 restorative justice cases were closed with 98% satisfaction by all parties. “It is not an abolitionist model nor does it aim to end all incarceration,” said Calderón “Any kind of conflict can be dealt with through restorative justice, as long as we have qualified personnel, the necessary resources, and willingness by all parties.”

Calderón believes even crimes of gender violence can be addressed this way, although they were were excluded from law due to feminist pressure. “Costa Rican society was not mature enough to understand that this is a very progressive law.”

The law has led to excellent outcomes — only 4% have reoffended during the two-year monitoring period. Recidivism in Colombia leads to a 36% reincarceration rate, while in Chile, the rate is 52.9%. In Mexico, it’s around 60% for robbery crimes. Costa Rica also found that psychosocial approaches resolve cases much more quickly (one to three months), and 86% more cost-effective compared to standard cases.

Cindy Torres Ortiz is one of the 96% who weren’t repeat offenders and successfully reintegrated into Costa Rican society. She has no intention of smuggling drugs into prison again or getting back together with the ex-boyfriend who coerced her during his year-long incarceration.

“I was very much in love. He was the one making all the decisions and I was just going along with everything. He wouldn’t let me work elsewhere — I was basically his employee,” said this mother of three. “I was relieved when I finally got caught. I wanted it to be over.” Torres has been drug-free for nearly five years and has graduated from high school.

“Thinking that prison is the solution to all our problems is a total disaster for Latin America,” said Luis Andrés Fajardo, Colombia’s Deputy Ombudsman. In the last 20 years, the prison population in Latin America and the Caribbean has risen by 120%, compared to a 24% increase in the rest of the world. Additionally, one in three detainees has not yet been sentenced. “What’s intriguing about this process is how the offenders are actively involved, and how it considers what the victims want in terms of redress.”

The early precursors of restorative justice models emerged in Canada in the mid-1970s, and examined how indigenous communities resolved conflicts by emphasizing reintegration rather than punishment. Restorative justice also played a vital role in peace processes in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Spain.

Berta Robles (a pseudonym) didn’t get any second chances. In late October, we met the Nicaraguan inmate at the Vilma Curling Rivera Prison in San José. She averted her gaze as she sat on a plastic chair not far from the cell she has shared with 25 women for four years. Robles takes a deep breath before telling us her story.

Robles has been living without legal documentation in Costa Rica for over 20 years. After her divorce, she worked at various odd jobs to support herself and five children. When she couldn’t make ends meet, she turned to prostitution, but the $16 she charged clients wasn’t enough to pay the rent. “I didn’t want to keep doing that,” she said. So when someone told her how easy it was to smuggle drugs into prisons, she decided to try. Her nervous, sweaty hands immediately gave her away to the prison guards. “I wasn’t made for that — they caught me right away.”

Robles was offered a restorative justice process and her sentence was commuted in exchange for community service. But then she tried to smuggle drugs into prison again to pay off the debt from first drug seizure. She was caught and sentenced to six years in prison in April 2019. “I didn’t get another chance and now I’m paying for it,” she told us after a long silence.

As for her children, she won’t be giving dating advice, attending graduations or celebrating birthdays. She’s lost everything. The days go by slowly in prison. Robles works, studies and goes to all the activities available to her. She spends as little time as possible with her cellmates. “I just want to get out of here — jail is not the best place to turn things around.”

Climate Change: Australia Offers Tuvalu Islanders Climate Change Visas

The Telegraph (UK) reports that "citizens of climate-threatened Tuvalu will be given the right to live in Australia under a landmark pact unveiled on Friday.

Tuvalu, a nation of low-lying atolls nestled in the South Pacific home to 11,000 people, is among the nations most at risk from rising sea levels and is predicted to be largely underwater by the end of this century. The scheme will see up to 280 Tuvaluans provided with visas each year allowing them to live, work and study in Australia.

It is the first time Australia has offered residency to foreign nationals because of threats related to climate change, local media reported. Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister,?described the agreement as “ground-breaking”. “We believe the people of Tuvalu deserve the choice to live, study and work elsewhere, as climate change impacts worsen,” he told a meeting of Pacific leaders in the Cook Islands.

“Australia has committed to provide a special pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to come to Australia, with access to Australian services that will enable human mobility with dignity.” Kausea Natano, Tuvalu’s prime minister, called it a “beacon of hope”, adding it marked a “giant leap forward in our joint mission to ensure regional stability, sustainability and prosperity”

Mr Albanese said the new bilateral partnership between the two countries came at the request of Tuvalu, which is part of the British Commonwealth. The partnership is called the Falepili Union, he said, and is based on the Tuvaluan word for the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. Under the pact, Australia will also vet Tuvalu’s security arrangements with other nations, Mr Albanese said.

He said it was Australia’s most significant agreement with a Pacific Island nation, giving “a guarantee that upon a request from Tuvalu for any military assistance based upon security issues, Australia will be there”.

Although Australia has defence agreements with other Pacific Islands nations, in a region where China recently struck a security pact with Solomon Islands and is seeking to expand its policing ties and infrastructure projects, the Tuvalu treaty goes much further in positioning Australia as its primary security partner.

Mr Albanese said Australia would also add more funding to Tuvalu’s Coastal Adaptation Project, which aims to expand land around the main island of Funafuti by about 6 per cent to help try and keep Tuvaluans on their homeland.

The annual cap on visas would ensure migration to Australia “does not cause brain drain”, he added. If all Tuvaluans decided to take up Australia on its offer – and if Australia kept its cap at 280 migrants per year – it would take about 40 years for Tuvalu’s entire population to relocate to Australia.

Tuvalu has been defined by the United Nations as “extremely vulnerable” to the effects of climate change, with most of its landmass less than 16 feet above sea level. If no action is taken, up to 95 per cent of land is projected to be submerged by high tides by 2100, according to the UN.

Half of the capital, Fogafale, is predicted to be flooded much sooner, by 2050. Around 40 per cent of the main atoll Funafuti already gets submerged during periodic “king” tides that wash away taro and cassava which were the islands’ staple crops.

Two of the atolls represented on its flag of 11 stars have already disappeared. In September, Tuvalu amended its constitution to say its statehood would remain in perpetuity, even if its physical territory disappears. It has also vowed to build a digital version of itself in the metaverse in order to preserve the country’s culture and history.

Experts are currently monitoring the region surrounding the new island to determine whether it will become a permanent fixture on Japan’s map or disappear. The new island could survive longer if it is made of lava or something more durable than volcanic rocks such as pumice.

“If only a cinder eruption, as it is now, it will be eroded by waves and is unlikely to remain for a long time, but if it turns into an eruption with lava, it may remain for quite a while,” an official at the Japan Meteorological Agency told local media."

Human Rights: Vatican Says Transgender People Can Be Baptized, Serve As Godparents

The Washington Post (US) reports that "the Vatican released guidance that says transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and witness weddings in the Roman Catholic Church, under certain circumstances, reflecting a continued opening by Pope Francis to the LBGTQ+ community.

The document, signed by Francis and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, was published on the website of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Wednesday. It responds to questions from a bishop in Brazil.

A transgender person “may receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful,” so long as this does not cause “scandal or disorientation” among other Catholics, terms that were not further defined in the document, dated Oct. 31. It also says that transgender people “can be admitted to the role of godfather or godmother” and that “there is nothing” in canon law prohibiting transgender people from witnessing marriage ceremonies.

The guidance published by the Vatican is not new and largely stems from a “confidential note” on “transsexualism” published in December 2018, the Dicastery said. It was not clear whether parts of the guidance had been publicly shared before. It contradicts a 2015 ruling from the Vatican, which at the time barred a transgender man in Spain from becoming a godparent.

Francis has removed conservative officials who once led the powerful Dicastery on Vatican doctrine and placed Fernández, an Argentine cardinal considered close to him, at its helm. Last month, Fernández and Francis issued guidance that opened a door to blessings of same-sex couples, as long as a distinction was made with the sacrament of marriage.

Officially, however, the church still teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law.” The pope’s continued outreach to the LBGTQ+ community comes after the first part of a major Vatican summit — or synod — ended in October with delegates deeply divided over outreach to gay people.

The synod’s closing document failed to mention the phrase “LGBTQ+,” as used in preliminary materials and grouped the question of “sexual orientation” under “new” and “controversial” ethical issues, including artificial intelligence. But the publication of the guidance this week was praised as a step toward inclusion by rights groups.

Sarah Kate Ellis, head of the LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization GLAAD, said in a statement that the affirmation “sends an unequivocal message to political and cultural leaders around the world to end their persecution and exclusion of transgender people,” and she praised Francis for “continuing to break down barriers.”

Francis DeBernardo, editor at the LGBTQ-focused New Ways Ministry, said welcoming transgender people more fully to Catholic sacraments is “a good step” but stressed, “that welcome needs to be expanded even more now.”

Same-sex couples cannot be married in the Catholic Church, and Catholic teaching condemns what it calls “homosexual acts” as “intrinsically immoral.” Given this context, Francis has surprised the public with statements going back to the early days of his papacy, when he said in 2013 “who am I to judge them?” in response to a question about gay priests. In January, Francis said that while he considers homosexuality a sin, it is not a crime. In October, he suggested an openness to priests blessing same-sex couples.

Benjamin Oh, co-chair of the Asia Pacific Rainbow Catholics Network, wrote in an email that the newly published document can be seen as “a sign of hope for LGBTIQA+ Catholics, that truth, justice and love can prevail,” stressing that “LGBTIQA+ people have been a part of every community in all human civilization, and that includes that of the Catholic church community.”

While the Vatican’s statement is new to most people in the community, Oh said there are already many baptized transgender Catholics, some of whom are godparents and godchildren, too. “The dichotomy of two opposing communities of LGBTIQA+ versus Catholic church is not an entirely truthful and helpful one,” Oh said.

Still, LGBTQ+ people face significant obstacles to full acceptance in the church, and churchgoers’ experiences can vary widely across dioceses and parishes, according to Human Rights Watch. The document released by the Vatican this week also appeared to raise questions about whether it is appropriate for same-sex couples living as spouses to become godparents, though it did not seem to shut the door entirely.

The U.S. Catholic bishops issued guidelines this year intended to stop Catholic hospitals from providing gender-affirming care. Some Catholic dioceses, smaller districts of the church, have enacted policies that prohibit students and workers at Catholic institutions from using the pronouns that match transgender students’ identities.

One such policy in Massachusetts requires students to “conduct themselves at school in a manner consistent with their biological sex,” local media reported. Transgender teachers have been fired from Catholic schools after coming out.

Kori Pacyniak, who studies the religious experience of transgender Catholics at the University of California at Riverside, said in an email that the church’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community has been historically fraught.

They cited phrases by the church “referring to ‘homosexual acts’ as ‘intrinsically disordered’ and referring to so-called ‘gender ideology’ as harmful and evil.” But “even when official teaching harms LGBTQ people, that doesn’t mean that LGBTQ people are any less Catholic or less faithful,” Pacyniak said.

Pacyniak praised Francis for “trying to guide the church into a more welcoming place,” though such efforts are “often incredibly slow-going.” Still, Pacyniak added, just because there is more work to be done “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the small steps along the way.”

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