At age 24, Alex Mangion became Malta’s first transgender politician when he won a local office on the conservative Nationalists’ ticket, a striking combination in a country that until recently had been a last bastion in western Europe of social norms largely dictated by the Catholic church.

The Nationalist Party recruited Mangion to run for town council with an eye toward grooming him as a candidate for next year’s Parliamentary election. The party, which governed Malta for a quarter-century, hopes to reverse its stinging, landslide 2013 loss to socialist archrivals who returned to power with an agenda heavy on LGBT rights. MORE