Sitting in her family home in East Los Angeles, Rosa Manriquez kept her eyes on the TV screen as a flood of white smoke came pouring out of the roof of the Sistine Chapel 6,300 miles away — a century-old signal that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church had chosen a new leader.
Manriquez, now 70, is the mother of two lesbian daughters who supports female ordination to the priesthood. On that day, 10 years ago, she waited impatiently to see who would emerge from behind the red curtain on a Vatican balcony as the head of the church she both loved and struggled against.