Cardinal Dolan discussed the controversial funeral for transgender activist Cecilia Gentili in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on this week’s “Conversation with Cardinal Dolan” on The Catholic Channel of Sirius XM and The Catholic Faith Network.

He praised the priests at the Cathedral for their quick decision during the Feb. 15 service not to proceed with the Mass due to the behavior of the crowd, opting instead for a shorter funeral service.

“We didn’t know the background. We don’t do FBI checks on people who want to be buried,” Cardinal Dolan said on Sirius XM’s The Catholic Channel. “So anyway, then, of course, once the funeral started, is when the trouble started because of the irreverence and the disrespect of the big crowd that was there. That was very, very sad. And again, I applaud our priests who made a quick decision that, uh-oh, with behavior like this we can’t do a Mass. We’ll do the Liturgy of the Word, which is the readings, and the sermon and the prayers, the petition, and the Our Father, and then we’ll stop it. The Mass is not going to go on. Bravo for our Cathedral people who knew nothing about this that was coming up.”

He also added that, “Our policy at the Cathedral is to be as open and welcoming of anybody who wants to be buried from here. And we had absolutely no idea about this. But why people still think the Cathedral purposely did that, well, a lot of people will always want to believe the worst. They don’t like us any more than the protesters did, in the Cathedral. But who knows.”

See Cardinal Dolan’s conversation with Fr. Dave Dwyer in the video above.

You can catch “Conversation with Cardinal Dolan” each week on @SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel (129) and Catholic Faith Network.