Cardinal Timothy Dolan has spoken out for the first time on the backlash over funeral services being held last week at St. Patrick's Cathedral for notable transgender activist Cecilia Gentili.

Dolan, speaking on his SiriusXM Catholic Channel show, says that when friends of Gentili asked to have the funeral there, the priest had no idea what her background was.

He says any Catholic who wants to have a funeral there is welcome, and the church does not do background checks on people who ask for that.

He says once the services started is when the trouble began, because he says the big crowd was irreverent and disrespectful.

He says priests made the right decision to not do a Mass due to the behavior of the crowd.

"When acts of disrespect toward the church go on, it does cause us a lot of anguish, doesn't it? So you know what happened. Everybody knows what happened now, I think our cathedral acted extraordinarily well."

Gentili died on Feb. 6 at the age of 52. Gentili's cause of death is unknown.