It's the Brian Lairor Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Kushan Afidar, sitting in the seat for Brian today while he's on vacation. You may have heard the news that the Catholic Church is set to name its first

millennial saint. Well, my next guest asks, when will it name a queer one? We'll spend some time

now at the intersection of spirituality, sainthood, and the LGBTQ plus community, and we'll hear

a case for queer saints. One name you should know as we head into this conversation is Father Michael Judge.

Father Michael, a gay man, was chaplain to the New York City Fire Department

and the first recorded casualty of the September 11th attacks.

For more now, I'm joined by Antonio Paglio Rulo, writer and author of The Evil Eye, the history, mystery,

and magic of the quiet curse. Pagliarulo, who is currently working on another book about

queer saints, recently published an essay on Out.com under the headline, The Catholic Church

named a millennial saints. When is it going to name a queer one? Antonio,

welcome to WNYC. Thank you, Cush. It's a pleasure to be here. The pleasure to have you. And listeners,

we want to invite you to call in and tell us your queer saints, especially if you identify as both

LGBTQ plus and Catholic. We're at 212-433-9-6-9-2. So, Antonio, let's get into your spiritual background a

little bit. You allude to growing up with a blend of folk magic and Catholicism. How unique

was that spiritual background? Did it contribute to your interest in recognizing queer saints?

Of course, because, well, saints in general were a part of my

upbringing. I grew up in, you know, I'm the child of Italian immigrants. We grew up in a two-family

house. My grandparents lived downstairs and they practiced, you know, what today we would consider,

I suppose, you know, folk magic, although they were devout Catholics. You know, this is the

stuff that I wrote about in my previous book about, you know, the

evil eye and certain herbal remedies and things like that.

But Saint magic was a great part of that.

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