Sodoma, the story of the Vatican hypocrisy. Don't ask, don't say

Article by Andrew Sullivan published on the fortnightly website New York (United States) on February 22, 2019, first part, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro

I spent most of the last week read and try to make the new and devastated book of this Frédéric Martel on the homosexuality at the top of the Catholic Church, Sodom (Feltrinelli Editore, 560 pages, 2019). Is a reportage large and disconcerting: Martel interviewed no less than "41 Cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, 45 apostolic nunci, nunciature secretaries and foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss guards and over 200 priests and seminarians". Martel has led more than 1,500 interviews over four years, exposes his sources with sufficient clarity and guides the reader in judging their credibility. It protects the identity of many of the most sensationally hypocritical cardinals, but is ruthless with those already dead.

The result is a picture that makes basis. Many of the Vatican gays, in particular the most homophobic, treat their celibacy with a light -heartedness mixed with contempt. According to Martel, many of these prelates have lively sexual lives, put into practice the "Don't ask, don't say", are always on the hunt for boys or of escort, they make parties based on sex and drugs and thus even squakes the Church's money. How do we know? Surprisingly, they tell us.

Many of the information of the book comes from sources a lot of governing in the Holy See. More or less anonymous cardinals and bishops tell about their colleagues's hypocrisy, without perhaps realizing that the latter do the same with them. Martel did not expect such a candor, nor what he discovered: "That they are 'practitioners', 'homophile', 'Initiati', 'not straight', 'Mondani', 'Versatile', 'In research' or simply 'hidden', the world I discovered, with its 50 shades of homosexuality, goes beyond any understanding".

Among the sources there is Francesco Lepore, a brilliant and young gay priest and Latinist. He had a well -started career and worked directly for Benedict XVI and Francesco, then he found a way to abandon his place because he could no longer bear the double life he was forced to lead, nor the grim hypocrisy of all that system.
Saw everything from the inside: "He has had numerous lovers between archbishops and prelates; he has received proposals from many cardinals, of whom we speak in the book; an endless list. I scrupulously checked all these stories, contacting these cardinals, archbishops, monsignors, nunci, assistants, common priests and confessors in San Pietro, all in practice homosexuals". This is not to pass insinuations, or gossip itchy, this is a reportage.

I am not naive on homosexuality in the Church; I lived there as gay as my whole adult life, and I have my eyes well open. As such, the book did not surprise me, but it still fed me, shocked and disgusted. You cannot simply set it aside, or refuse to believe what is evidently true.

The book helps to understand Pope Francis of Cardinals deeper into depth, in particular his complaints of "Pharisees" and "Hypocrites", with their sexual amorality, their wealth and their power: "Behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life". He strongly criticized the "Hypocrites" living "Hidden and often dissolute lives", those "Who make up the soul and live on makeup"; then exclaimed in public that "Hypocrisy hurts very much: it's a lifestyle".

The only thin consolation of the book is the awareness that today we have a pope who, despite all his defects, knows with those who have to do and have acted, sometimes a little abruptly, to remove, reduce to the lay state and move the most sensational cases to places where there is nothing to do. This is the key to understanding the ferocity of the opposition of the Catholic right. The most determined opponents of Francesco are very hidden gays prelates, extreme right, who live double lives in sumptuous buildings, supported by the most cruel reactionaries and bigots of the West, which often protest in the face of their removals.

Yes, sometimes Martel exaggerates a little, but it is understandable. He, gay and secular journalist, not hostile to the Church, entered the Vatican and was displaced by omosexuality omnipresent. In the West there was no longer such a gay neighborhood after the 80s (Lapore risky that 80% of the Vatican population may be gay). As Martel it always shows better, a theme emerges powerfully: "Homosexuality is increasingly widespread as we approach the saint of the saints; as we go up to the Catholic hierarchy, we find more homosexuals. The more a prelate opposes gays, the stronger the homophobic obsession is, more likely is not sincere and his violence hides something". It is a lesson that I learned too preparing mine dossier on gay priests.

It is therefore not a great surprise to see how Paolo VI was influenced by certain Catholic gay writers, and is completely predictable as the pontificate of John Paul II, the one who launched a new war against homosexuals, was the most gay of all, and one of the most resistant to investigations of sexual abuse.
His right arm and successor, Joseph Ratzinger (who will then become Pope Benedict XVI), personally received any reporting of sexual abuse from consecrated under John Paul II, but ignored most of them, and chose instead of making stigmatization and persecution of healthy gays and serene his mission. There was no dissident theologian who did without notice and punish, but never found a reason to investigate a pedophile.

As for America, Martel reports what everyone already knows: "Cardinal Wakefield Baum, a former Archbishop of Washington, who died a few years ago, lived for many years with his personal assistant [...] Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a former Archbishop of Washington [...] was well known to 'find sleeping' with seminarians and young priests, whom he called his 'grandchildren' [...] Rembert Weakland suffered an 'outing' by a former partner [...] an American cardinal was chased by the Vatican and sent back to the United States for inappropriate behavior with a Swiss guard.
Another American cardinal, bishop of a large city in the United States, 'lives for many years with his partner, a former priest', while the archbishop of another city, devoted to the Latin mass and dedicated to the battagin, 'lives surrounded by a flock of young seminarians', a fact confirmed to me by Robert Carl Michens, an American Vaticanist who knows well the gay lifestyle of the most eminent Catholic prelates of the states of the states of the states. United ".

Original text: The Corruption of the Vatican's Gay Elite Has Been Exposed