Brooklyn Episcopal church hosts memorial service for murdered Georgian trans-woman

[Episcopal News Service] Georgians and their supporters from All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, New York, came together on Sept. 29 to celebrate the life of Kesaria Abramidze, a well-known transgender woman who was stabbed to death last week in her apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia.

“This young woman was my friend,” David Schubladze told Episcopal News Service. Schubladze, 38, was a long-time LGBTQ+ activist in the former Soviet Republic who came to the U.S. in 2015 as an asylum-seeker. “We were friends for more than 20 years. She was a voice for transgender people, and I was a voice for gay people.”

The memorial at All Saints’ was an opportunity “to show the family that she wasn’t alone,” Schubladze said. The conservative Georgian Orthodox Church refused Abramidze’s family’s request for a funeral, which devastated them.

Close to 40 people, including eight non-Georgian speakers, attended the Brooklyn memorial service. Abramidze’s mother, Gulisa Abramidze, called in and thanked those gathered for accepting her daughter as a woman.

“The best way to say goodbye as a Christian is to celebrate life and have a liturgy on behalf of the deceased, and the Georgian Church refused that,” he Schubladze. “I want people to know that she wasn’t alone, and we are here for her, and we will try to continue her work. She was an exemplary person, and she will never vanish from our memory.”

Abramidze, 37, was stabbed to death in her home by her boyfriend on Sept. 18. A day earlier, on Sept. 17, Georgia’s parliament passed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that includes bans on same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, favorable media portrayals of LGBTQ+ people, gender-affirming care and changing genders on official documents. The legislation mirrors similar laws passed in Russia.

Abramidze’s death came as a shock to Thoma Lipartiani, an Episcopalian who started and led St. Nimo’s Episcopal Mission in Tbilisi six years ago. The two had an online friendship lasting many years, and Lipartiani described her to ENS as “very positive” and “deeply religious,” though she’d long ago left the Orthodox Church over theological differences.

“She was at least one transgender woman in Georgia who was loved by everyone, even by people who are a little bit homophobic or transphobic,” said Lipartiani, 27, who traveled to the memorial in Brooklyn from Arlington, Virginia, where he’s now a first-year seminarian at Virginia Theological Seminary. “She was very beautiful, a was a very talented actor, and she was always very positive during her interviews. That’s why she was loved by everyone.”

During their early years as activists, Schubladze and Abramidze “were like two hands of the same body,” Schubladze said, though the two of them agreed they’d speak for themselves.

“I cannot talk on behalf of the women, women can talk for themselves. [Abramidze] was notorious about trans rights and the women’s rights,” he said.

Schubladze once was a Roman Catholic seminarian before his sexuality got him expelled. When he came to the New York area, which has the largest Georgian population outside Europe, he began researching Protestant denominations, looking for a place of belonging. Eventually, through an online connection with Lipartiani, he found All Saints’.

Georgians, he said, are “very spiritual,” but often don’t fit with Orthodox teachings, which, he said, are not rooted in Christian love.

Along with the Rev. Steven Paulikas, All Saints’ rector, he started the Georgian American Fellowship. The memorial service marked the third time they came together to celebrate the liturgy in the Georgian language.

“The Georgian Fellowship at All Saints’ is a space of radical welcome where people can gather, heal and connect with God. One person who attended the liturgy yesterday said it was their first time not feeling afraid and ashamed in a church. Another person said it was unbelievable to see a picture of Kesaria with candles in a church,” Paulikas told ENS in a follow-up email on Sept. 30. “And it was remarkable to me how many members of our English-speaking congregation were there just to support. I can’t imagine a greater blessing than being the priest in a community as spiritually powerful as this one.”

-Lynette Wilson is a journalist and managing editor of Episcopal News Service.