SAN FRANCISCO – Transgender San Francisco Catholic school teacher Gabriel Bodenheimer, who was born a woman but identifies as a man, is finding “acceptance” from school officials and local religious leaders.

Bodenheimer exposed himself as a transgender man recently amid the national debate on school transgender issues, and the move put his job teaching English at Mercy High School at risk because of the church’s stance that God created two genders, male and female.

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But officials with the Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community that sponsors the school and five others set aside their moral and religious beliefs to embrace acceptance and keep Bodenheimer on the payroll, the Associated Press reports.

He’s now fully accepted as a male teacher, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“It was very important to speak, and name myself, and not be silent,” said Bodenheimer, who taught at the all-girls school for four years before announcing his gender identity. “The response I got was tremendously positive.”

Sister Laura Reicks, head of the Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community, said the decision not to fire Bodenheimer was based on the order’s “values,” according to the news service.

“This is significant for us; we did not take this lightly,” she said. “We feel because of our values, the choice was this, but that didn’t mean it was easy.”

In April, Pope Francis joined the American College of Pediatricians in condemning transgenderism as an ideology of gender that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family,” Breitbart reports.

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The Pope’s comments followed a similar message from the American College of Pediatricians that human sexuality is “an objective biological binary trait” and not a broad spectrum of self-identified genders. Those who do not believe themselves to be either male or female are literally sick in the head, the doctors argued.

“A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking,” according to the ACP. “When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.”

Regardless, San Francisco’s Catholic leaders seem to be accepting the sisters’ decision.

“Often in such situations a balance must be struck in a way that distinct values are upheld, such as mercy and truth, or institutional integrity and respect for personal decisions affecting one’s life,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a statement that neither endorsed nor opposed Bodenheimer’s retention.

Cordileone said decisions about transgender issues in the Catholic church should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, “allowing for prudential judgement,” the AP reports.