MERCOGLIANO, Italy (RNS) — The pews of the Church of the Annunziata in Mercogliano, a town just outside of Naples, were filled with guests wearing lacquered nails, towering wigs and heavy eyelashes. The group known as femminielli — meaning a nonbinary gender identity with ancient roots — had gathered there for their annual pilgrimage, La Juta
, honoring the biblical Mary and affirming the femminielli identity.The parish priest celebrating the Mass,
the Rev. Vitaliano Della Sala, said in his Feb.2 homily that the Juta "is a celebration of the encounter between the human and the divine,” stressing that these occasions are more important now than ever as violence, prejudice and war threaten rights around the world.
The Juta dei Femminielli is an old Catholic event that combines the human with the divine and highlights an identity rooted in cultural expression and Parthenopean, or Neapolitan, mythology. It takes place every year on Feb. 2, when Catholics celebrate Candlemas, the feast commemorating the presentation of Jesus to the temple. During the Mass, faithful bring their candles to the church to be blessed by the priest.
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For the pilgrimage, hundreds of femminielli from all over Italy traditionally hike to the Sanctuary of Montevergine, which holds the painting of the icon Madonna of Montevergine.
The Mass was meant as a celebration of joy and prayer but also reflected a sense of grief as the priest remembered the recent death of Paolo Minturno, a 14-year-old who died by suicide after alleged relentless bullying by classmates who called him “Paoletta,” a feminized version of his name, and “femminuccia,” a derogatory term akin to “sissy.”
“We live it deeply — we cried in church, we held each other because we talk about transphobia, we talk about sisters who have died,” said a femminiello named Jupy.
Despite the Juta being an ancient tradition, this year was the first time transgender women were invited to do the church readings.
“They want people to believe the church is a place of darkness for us,” Gold Queen, a transgender entertainer, said outside the church. “But there are people inside the church who open their arms, open the doors and help tear down the walls of inequality.”
Femminiello, originating from the Italian term for female but with a male diminutive, is a traditional Neapolitan third gender role with ancient historical roots. Femminielli is the plural form, and such individuals have occupied ceremonial, societal and even sacred functions in the history of Naples. Today, the concept of femminiello has expanded to mean the larger LGBTQ+ community, although it continues to have its own cultural identity.
According to medieval lore, in 1256, two young men accused of having a same-sex relationship were dragged by the townsfolk and tied naked to ice slabs on the nearby Mount Partenio, left to die of exposure. The two youths, miraculously saved, believers say, by the nearby Madonna of Montevergine, who melted the ice and freed them from their chains, awing the people of the town. Since then, the figure also known as Mamma Schiavona has become a symbol for those who are oppressed and marginalized but still worthy of divine protection.
The Juta event has not been held continuously throughout the centuries. In 2002, femminielli were barred from the Sanctuary of Montevergine.
And for this year’s Juta, a landslide on the road to the sanctuary forced organizers to move the church celebration to the Church of the Annunziata.
“Despite everything, the femminielli didn’t stop because beyond folklore, this is an act of faith, an act of resistance,” said Lust Queen, a trans woman who read the Psalm at Mass. “We are here for all oppressed peoples.”
In Naples, where gender roles are often rigidly defined, femminielli have experienced a complex history involving a mix of acceptance, distrust and loneliness, said Marzia Mauriello, an anthropologist at the University of Naples L’Orientale, who studies gender variance, embodiment and popular religion in southern Italy. Mauriello described femminiello as “a floating signifier, like ‘queer,’ which changes depending on who is speaking.”
Part of what enabled acceptance of femminielli within society was their “high level of performativity,” Mauriello said, which combined well with the theatrical history of the city of Naples. Songs, gestures and dances “allowed femminielli to know how to stay on the public scene, using its languages, and that contributed to their social inclusion,” she said.
Viewed as existing between male and female, femminielli were historically seen as figures with a privileged relationship to the supernatural, said Mauriello, who has attended the Juta for the past five years.
Several Neapolitan rituals revolve around the femminielli. The Wedding of the Femminielli is held in popular Neapolitan neighborhoods, where two femminielli dress in wedding gowns and take part in mock nuptials. A childbirth ritual has a femminiello theatrically give birth to a doll amid music and song, symbolizing fertility and regeneration. Femminielli also lead a Catholic rosary prayer, placing their identity squarely within formal religious practice.
The Trans Association of Naples has worked since 2007 to revive and preserve these traditions. Loredana Rossi, the group’s vice president, said that for a time, many of the rituals were fading.“ But after a few years, little by little, people started coming back, and today you see a multitude,” she said.
Growing up in the Naples area, Rossi said that the culture of the femminiello flourished after World War II, when men were away and women took on jobs outside the home .“Femminielli stayed in the house, caring for children and keeping the household,” she said.
“Today, they are called trans, transgender. But not me. I don’t define myself as a trans woman— I feel like a femminiello,” Rossi said.
Anthropologists have noted symbolic parallels between femminielli and ancient Mediterranean traditions associated with fertility cults in Phoenician, Anatolian and Greek cultures. Some participants in Naples seek to recover these pre-Christian layers of identity. After the Mass, Jupy, along with friends, went to celebrate a pagan ritual involving flickering candles and archaic hymns.
“This is a queer cultural heritage that predates the importation of American LGBTQ categories. It’s an inestimable heritage, alive within us,” Jupy said. “This is a corner of the world that is so queer, so sirenic, because it is in our Neapolitan, Parthenopean nature to be sirens,” referring to the figure of Parthenope, a siren whose name is also an alternate name for Naples.
The Juta concluded with a bawdy, performative version of a traditional Neapolitan bingo game, featuring songs, karaoke and irreverent jokes. Calls to the Virgin Mary blended with pop music lyrics, a reflection of the Catholic, Neapolitan and popular cultures of the femminielli themselves.
For Rossi, the words of the priest at Mass reinforced her sense of belonging to both the religious and cultural roots of her land.
“He spoke of a God who is love, who embraces everyone without looking at color, ethnicity, status or religion — a human God,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I was in a house taken from others. I felt I was in the Lord’s house, and that it was our home too.”
