Top Quotes: “In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy” — Frederic Martel

“Pope Francis confided to his entourage, ‘I read the book. It’s good. I knew it all,’ according to the indiscretions of the American, French and Italian press.”

“This book is not based on a single rumour, insinuation, ‘innuendo’ or piece of gossip. There are only facts. In addition to the hundreds of interviews I conducted with cardinals, bishops, nuncios and priests, I have published over three hundred pages of sources online. These include over two thousand archival documents gathered with the help of my team of eighty researchers, thousands of declassified documents from the American State Department, confidential diplomatic telegrams, police reports and court records, testimonies from doctors and prostitutes, duly cited press articles and the list of books consulted.”

“If not for bringing this system to light, how else should we understand the impact that In the Closet of the Vatican has had around the world since its publication in February 2019, in dozens of countries? If the analysis was wrong or caricatural, why has the book created such an unprecedentedly huge explosion within the Church? Why has it been so very widely read by bishops and priests? Why has it changed the terms of debate in the media worldwide, to the point where, according to the influential theologian James Alison, it has reshuffled the cards and changed the rules of the game forever? Why, if not because it confirms what all the witnesses, all the priests and cardinals of the Curia, all the Vaticanologists and sufficiently well-informed people knew (and told me ‘off the record”? Since the book’s publication, I have received thousands of letters and emails, sometimes desperate and very moving, that contain testimonies confirming my thesis. And this is not to count the numerous scandals and other affairs that have continued to erupt since the arrival of In the Closet of the Vatican, and that confirm the structural nature of the problem.

This is why I am happy to have contributed to changing the conversation about Catholicism. From now on, the question is not to try to understand why so many cardinals and priests are homophobic, but rather to understand why they are so very frequently homosexual. It is no longer a matter of denouncing the gay presence in the Church, but one of understanding why the Church predominantly attracts, recruits and promotes homosexuals due to this ‘clerical homosexuality’. This is why we must no longer confuse homosexuality with sexual abuse — on the contrary, we must understand why the illusion of chastity and the culture of secrecy concerning the sexuality of priests are the true template for the system of cover-ups. And if there were only one rule to take away from this book, it is the following: the more homophobic a cardinal is in public, the more likely he is homosexual in private.”

“Often, those priests, influential or otherwise, came on to me discreetly and some, with very little reluctance, more intensely. It’s an occupational hazard!”

“Not forgetting those who live with their boyfriends in the palaces of the Vatican, where I have met them; they introduced their companions as their assistants, their minutante, their deputy, their chauffeur, their valet, their factotum, even their bodyguard!

The Vatican has one of the biggest gay communities in the world, and I doubt whether, even in San Francisco’s Castro, the emblematic gay quarter, though more mixed today, there are quite as many gays!

The reason for this, among the older cardinals, should be sought in the past: their stormy youths and roguish years before gay liberation explain their double lives and their homophobia in the old style.”

“Homosexuality is also one of the keys that explain the institutionalized cover-up of sexual crimes and misdemeanours, of which there are now tens of thousands. Why? How? Because the ‘culture of secrecy’, which was necessary to maintain silence about the huge presence of homosexuality inside the Church, has made it possible to hide sexual abuse, and for predators to benefit from this system of protection within the institution .”

“Homophilic cardinals privilege prelates who have homosexual inclinations and who, in turn, choose gay priests. Nuncios, those ambassadors of the pope who are given the task of selecting bishops and among whom the percentage of homosexuals reaches record levels, in turn perform a ‘natural’ selection. According to all the statements that I have collected, the priests who have such inclinations are thought to be favoured when their homosexuality is guessed. More prosaically, it is not rare for a nuncio or a bishop to promote a priest who is also part of ‘the parish’ because the former expects some favours in return.”

“The omnipresence of homosexuals in the Vatican isn’t just a matter of a few black sheep, or the ‘net that caught the bad fish’, as Josef Ratzinger put it. It isn’t a ‘lobby’ or a dissident movement; neither is it a sect of a Freemasonry inside the holy see: it’s a system. It isn’t a tiny minority; it’s a big majority.

At this point in the conversation, I ask Francesco Lepore to estimate the size of this community, all tendencies included. ‘I think the percentage is very high. I’d put it at around 80 per cent.’

During a discussion with a non-Italian archbishop, whom I met several times, he confirmed to me: ‘Three of the last five popes are said to have been homophilic, some of their assistants and secretaries of state too, as well as most cardinals and bishops in the Curia. But it isn’t a matter of knowing whether those Vatican priests have this kind of inclination: they do. It’s a matter of knowing — and this, in fact, is the true debate — whether they are practising or non-practising homosexuals. That’s where things get complicated. Some prelates who have inclinations do not practise homosexuality. They might be homophilic in their life and culture, but without having a homosexual identity.’”

“As early as the Middle Ages, Popes John XII and Benedict IX committed the ‘abominable sin’, and everyone in the Vatican knows the name of the boyfriend of Pope Adrian IV (the famous John of Salisbury), and of the lovers of Pope Boniface VIII. The marvellously scandalous life of Pope Paul II is equally famous: he is said to have died of a heart attack in the arms of a page. As for Pope Sixtus IV, he appointed several of his lovers cardinal, including his nephew Raphael, who was made cardinal at the age of 17 (the expression ‘cardinal-nephew’ has been passed down to posterity). Julius II and Leo X, both patrons of Michelangelo, and Julius Ill, are also generally presented as bisexual popes.”

“The investigation in the Boston Globe freed the tongues of people all over the country, bringing to light a systematic network of sexual abuse: 8,948 priests were accused, and over 15,000 victims identified (85 per cent of them boys between the ages of 11 and 17). The Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, became the symbol of the scandal: his coverup campaign, and his protection of numerous pedophile priests, finally forced him to resign (with an exfiltration to Rome, handily organized by Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, which allowed him to enjoy diplomatic immunity and thus escape American justice).

A fine connoisseur of the American episcopate, Burke could not have been unaware of the fact that most of the Catholic hierarchy in his country — the cardinals, the bishops — are homosexual: the famous and powerful cardinal and Archbishop of New York Francis Spellman, was a ‘sexually voracious homosexual’ if we are to believe his biographers, the testimony of Gore Vidal or confidential remarks by the former head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. Similarly, Cardinal Wakefield Baum of Washington, recen deceased, lived for many years with his personal assistant — classic of the genre.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, was also a practising homosexual: he was well-known for ‘sleeping arrangements’ with seminarians and young priests whom he called his ‘nephews’ (finally accused of sexual abuse, he was forbidden to hold public office by the pope in 2018). Archbishop Rembert Weakland was ‘outed’ by a former boyfriend (he has since described his journey as a homophile in his memoirs). One American cardinal has been banned from the Vatican and sent back to the United States for his improper conduct with a Swiss Guard.

Another American cardinal, the bishop of a large city in the United States, ‘has lived for years with his boyfriend, a former priest’, while an archbishop of another city, a devotee of the Latin mass and a man much given to cruising, ‘lives surrounded by a flock of young seminarians’, a fact confirmed to me by Robert Carl Mickens, an American Vaticanologist familiar with the gay lifestyle of the senior Catholic hierarchy in the United States. The Archbishop of St Paul and Minneapolis, John Clayton Nienstedt, is also a homophile, and was investigated by his Archdiocese in connection with allegations that he had inappropriate sexual contact with adult men (allegations he categorically denies). He subsequently resigned when criminal charges were brought against the Archdiocese concerning its handling of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys; another resignation that was accepted by Pope Francis.

The private lives of the American cardinals, in a country where Catholicism is a minority religion and has long had bad press, is often the subject of probes in the media, which have fewer scruples than in Italy, Spain or France about revealing the double life of the clergy.”

“According to two different sources, Cardinal Bergoglio had shown understanding with regard to Argentinian priests who blessed homosexual unions. And yet, when the debate on same-sex marriage began in 2009, Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio’s attitude changed.

Bergoglio hurled himself into battle. He had very harsh words on the subject of gay marriage (‘an attack designed to destroy God’s plans’) and even summoned politicians, including the mayor of Buenos Aires, to give them a lecture on the subject. He publicly opposed the president, Cristina Kirchner, engaging with her in a tug of war that would turn into a settling of scores — and that he would lose in the end. The future pope also tried to silence priests who expressed opinions in favour of gay marriage, and punished them; he encouraged Catholic schools to take to the streets. This image of harshness contrasts, at the very least, with that of the pope who uttered his famous line, ‘Who am I to judge?’

‘Bergoglio isn’t Francis,’ the journalist Miriam Lewin commented acidly.

The Argentinian Lutheran pastor Lisandro Orlov adds: ‘That’s what explains why everyone was anti-Bergoglio in Buenos Aires! Even though they’ve all become pro-Francis since he’s been pope!’”

“According to some in the media, Argentinian priest Julio Grassi, suspected of acts of sexual abuse against 17 minors, was protected by Cardinal Bergoglio, who went so far as to ask the episcopal conference of which he was president to finance the defence of the abuser, by launching a counter-inquiry to try and have the accusations against him dropped. In 2009, Father Grassi was given 15 years in prison, a sentence confirmed by the Argentinian supreme court in 2017.)

“Behind the majority of cases of sexual abuse there are priests and bishops who have protected the aggressors because of their own homosexuality and out of fear that it might be revealed in the event of a scandal.”

“He was exploited in an unexpected way that he himself couldn’t have imagined when he left Tunis for Naples, via Sicily. Because while this 21-year-old man is heterosexual, he’s condemned to prostitute himself with men every evening near Roma Termini station just to survive. Mohammed is a ‘sex worker’; to me he calls himself an ‘escort’, which is a better visiting card. And even more extraordinarily, this Muslim’s clients are essentially Catholic priests and prelates connected to the churches of Rome or the Vatican.”

“It took me several months of careful observation and meetings to understand the subtle nocturnal geography of the boys of Roma Termini. Each group of prostitutes has its patch, its marked territory. It’s a division that reflects racial hierarchies and a whole range of prices. So the Africans are usually sitting on the guardrail by the southwestern entrance to the station; the Maghrebis, sometimes the Egyptians, tend to stay around Via Giovanni Giolitti, at the crossing with the Rue Manin or under the arcades on Piazza dei Cinquecento; the Romanians are close to Piazza della Repubblica, beside the naked sea-nymphs of the Naiad Fountain or around the Dogali Obelisk; the ‘Latinos’, last of all, cluster more towards the north of the square, on Viale Enrico de Nicola or Via Marsala. Sometimes there are territorial wars between groups, and fists fly.

This geography isn’t stable; it changes with the years, the seasons or the waves of migrants. There have been ‘Kurdish’, ‘Yugoslav’, ‘Eritrean’ periods; more recently a wave of Syrians and Iraqis, and now we see Nigerians, Argentinians and Venezuelans arriving at Roma Termini. But there is one fairly constant element: there are few Italians on Piazza dei Cinquecento.

The legalization of homosexuality, the proliferation of bars and saunas, mobile apps, laws on same-sex marriage, and the socialization of gays tend, everywhere in Europe, to dry up the market in male street prostitution. With one exception: Rome. There’s quite a simple explanation: the priests help to keep this market alive, even though it’s increasingly anachronistic in the time of the internet. And for reasons of anonymity, they seek out migrants.”

“In 2018 he made public the sex lives of 34 priests in a 1,200-page document that included the names of the clerics concerned, their photographs, audio recordings and screen shots of his sexual exchanges with them, from WhatsApp or Telegram. It all caused a considerable scandal, dozens of articles and television programmes appearing in Italy. (I was able to consult the ‘dossier’ called Preti gay; it reveals dozens of priests celebrating mass in their cassocks and then, stark naked, celebrating other kinds of frolic via webcam.)”

“Homosexual priests and theologians are much more inclined to impose priestly celibacy than their heterosexual co-religionists. They are very concerned to have this vow of chastity respected, even though it is intrinsically against nature.”

“The homosexual life of the Mexican clergy is a well-known and by now a well-documented phenomenon. It is estimated that over two-thirds of Mexican cardinals, archbishops and bishops are ‘practising’. An important homosexual organization, FON, has even ‘outed’ 38 Catholic leaders, making their names public.

This proportion is said to be less significant among mere prelates and ‘indigenous’ bishops, among whom, according to a report officially delivered to the Vatican by Mgr Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño, 75 per cent of diocesan priests in the states of Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Chia-pas, where native Americans are in the majority, live with women, either cohabiting or secretly married. In short, the Mexican clergy is said to be actively heterosexual in the countryside and practising homosexual in the cities!”

“To avoid rumours, La Mongolfiera and Platinette did take precautions: they instituted a sophisticated system of recruiting escorts via a triple filter. They themselves described their needs to a ‘gentleman of His Holiness’, a layman who was married and possibly heterosexual, and who, unlike his clients, had priorities other than homosexuality. He was immersed in a multitude of suspicious financial dealings, and in return for his services what he chiefly wanted was solid support at the top of the Curia and a visiting card.

In return for significant considerations, this ‘gentleman of His Holiness’, whose pseudonym was Negretto, a singer from Nigeria and a member of the Vatican choir, over the years constructed a fertile network of gay seminarians, Italian escorts and foreign male prostitutes. A real system of Russian dolls, each one fitting into the others, Negretto appealed to a third intermediary, whom he used as a tout and a go-between. They recruited in all directions, particularly from migrants who needed residence permits: if they proved to be ‘understanding’, this gentleman promised to intervene so that they would obtain their papers. (Here I am using information taken from the written records of phone calls made by the Italian police and used in the trial to which this affair gave rise.)

The system would last for several years, under the pontificate of John Paul II and the early part of that of Benedict XVI, and supplied services not only for cardinals La Mongolfera and Platinette and their friend the bishop, but for a fourth prelate (whose identity I have been unable to establish).

The action as such is supposed to have occurred outside the Vatican, in several residences, notably a villa with a pool, some luxury apartments in the centre of Rome and, according to two witnesses, the pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. This site, which I visited with an archbishop from the Vatican, is located, opportunely enough, in the extraterritorial zone, and is the property of the holy see and not of Italy, with the consequence that the Italian police are unable to intervene (as they confirmed to me). There, far from watchful eyes, under the pretext of exercising his dogs, a prelate can also put his favourites through their paces.

According to several sources, the critical point of this network of luxury escorts was the way in which it was financed. Not only did cardinals have recourse to male prostitution to satisfy their libido; not only were they homosexuals in private while advocating severe homophobia in public; they also took care not to pay for their gigolos themselves! In fact, they dug deep into the coffers of the Vatican to pay their intermediaries, who varied over time, as did the highly expensive, if not ruinous, escorts (up to 2,000 euros an evening for luxury escorts, according to the information gathered by the Italian police working on the case). Some Vatican monsignori, broadly informed about the affair, found an ironic nickname for these thrifty prelates: ‘the ATM priests’.

In the end, the Italian justice system inadvertently brought this prostitution network to an end, by having several of those behind the system arrested because of serious cases of corruption related to it. Two of the intermediaries were also arrested after being identified in telephone conversations. The prostitution network was consequently closed down by the police, who were aware of its extent, but they were unable to charge the main clients, who enjoyed Vatican immunity: Cardinals La Mongolfera and Platinette.”

“If they are not in stable couples, homosexuals engage in a more complicated life that entails one of the three remaining options: travelling to find sexual freedom (that is the royal road often taken by nuncios and assistants of the Secretariat of State, as we will see); going to specialist commercial bars; or visiting male prostitutes. In all three cases, you need money. And yet a priest’s wages are usually somewhere in the region of 1,000 to 1,500 euros per month, often with pension and work accommodation thrown in — sums that are far from sufficient when it comes to satisfying complicated desires. The priests and bishops at the Vatican are not rich in funds: they are, it is said, ‘minimum wage-earners who live like princes’.

In the end, the double life of a homosexual in the Vatican implies very strict control of one’s private life, a culture of secrecy and financial needs: all incitements to camouflage and lies. All of this serves to explain the dangerous liaisons between money and sex, the proliferation of financial scandals and homosexual intrigues, and the rings of lust that developed under John Paul I, in a city that has become a byword for corruption.”

“During about a dozen secret meetings at the Café Makasar, he revealed to me what really troubled him in the Vatican: the sustained and sometimes aggressive advances of certain cardinals.

‘If just one of them touches me, I’ll smash his face in and resign,’ he tells me in explicit terms.

Nathanaël isn’t gay, or even gay-friendly: he tells me of his revulsion at several cardinals and bishops who tried it on with him (and gives me their names). He was traumatized by what he had discovered in the Vatican in terms of double lives, sexual advances and even harassment.

‘I’ve been disgusted by what I’ve seen. I still haven’t got over it. And to think that I took a vow to “sacrifice my life” if necessary, for the pope!’

And yet, had not the worm been in the apple from the outset? The Swiss Guard was founded in 1506 by Pope Julius Il, whose bisexuality is well attested. As for the uniform of the smallest army in the world, a Renaissance rainbow-flag jacket and a two-pointed halberdier’s hat decorated with heron feathers, according to legend it was designed by Michelangelo.

A police lieutenant colonel in Rome tells me that the Swiss Guard adhere to strict professional secrecy. ‘There’s an incredible omerta. They are taught to lie for the pope, for reasons of state. There are plenty of cases of harassment or sexual abuse, but they are hushed up and the Swiss Guard is always made indirectly responsible for what happened. They are given to understand that if they talk, they won’t find another job. On the other hand, if they behave themselves, they will be helped to find a job when they return to civilian life in Switzerland. Their future career depends on their silence.’”

“The rules of recruitment for the Guards were deemed to be discriminatory: women were banned (although they are accepted into the Swiss army); a young married man or a man in a relationship cannot apply for a post, only bachelors are accepted; his reputation must be ‘irreproachable’, and he must have ‘sound morals’ (phrases designed to rule out not only gays, but also transsexuals); as for migrants, so dear to Pope Francis, they are also ineligible for recruitment. Last of all, it appears that people with disabilities or people of colour, black people or Asians, are also rejected during the selection process, although the texts are not explicit on this point.”

“According to Morgain — and his testimony has been confirmed by that of other priests — in the course of his diva tours Alfonso López Trujillo would spot priests close to liberation theology and then organize their ‘removal’. Some of those priests disappeared, or were murdered by paramilitaries just after the archbishop’s visit.”

“He abused his position so as to requisition all valuable objects held by the churches he visited — the jewels, the silver cups, the paintings — which he recovered for his own advantage.

‘He confiscated all the valuable objects from the parishes and sold them or gave them to the cardinals or bishops of the Roman Curia, to win their favour. A minutely detailed inventory of all these thefts has since been drawn up by a priest,’ Alvaro Léon tells me.”

“’López Trujillo beat prostitutes; that was his relationship with sexuality. He paid them, but they had to accept his blows in return. It always happened at the end, not during the physical act. He finished his sexual relations by beating them, out of pure sadism,’ Alvaro Léon goes on.

At this level of perversion, there is something strange about the violence of desire. These sexual excesses, this sadism towards prostitutes, are far from ordinary. López Trujillo had no concern for the bodies he rented out. He even had a reputation for paying his gigolos badly, negotiating hard, his eyes blank, to get the lowest price. If there is one pathetic character in this book, it’s López Trujillo.

The deviations of this ‘louche soul’ did not stop, of course, at the borders of Colombia. The system was perpetuated in Rome, where he went cruising at Roma Termini, (according to a witness), and soon everywhere in the world, where he had a brilliant career as an anti-gay orator and millionaire john.

Travelling ceaselessly on behalf of the Curia, wearing his hat as anti-condom propagandist-in-chief, López Trujillo took advantage of these trips to find boys (according to the statements of at least two nuncios). The cardinal is said to have visited over a hundred countries, several favourites of his being in Asia, a continent that visited frequently after discovering the sexual charms of Bangkok and Manila in particular. During those countless journeys to the other side of the world, where he was less well-known than in Colombia or Italy, the peripatetic cardinal regularly disappeared from seminaries and masses to devote himself to his trade: his ‘taxi boys’ and ‘money boys’.”

“AIDS ravaged the holy see and the Italian episcopate during the 1980s and 1990s. A secret that was kept quiet for a long time.

A number of priests, monsignori and cardinals died of the effects of AIDS. Some patients ‘admitted’ their infection in confession’ (as one of the confessors of St Peter’s confirmed to me without mentioning names). Other priests were diagnosed through their annual blood test, compulsory for Vatican staff but this obligation does not apply to monsignori, nuncios, bishops or cardinals): this includes an AIDS test; according to my information, some priests were removed after being diagnosed positive.

The significant proportion of people with AIDS within the Catholic hierarchy is corroborated by a statistical study carried out in the United States, based on the death certificates of Catholic priests, which concluded that they had a mortality rate connected to the AIDS virus four times higher than that of the general population. Another study, based on the anonymized examination of 65 Roman seminarians in the early 1990s, showed that 38 per cent of them were seropositive.”

“’We think,’ Professor Massimo Giuliani tells me, ‘that the risk of being infected with AIDS when one belongs to the male Catholic community is high at present, because of denial and because of the low rate of condom use. In our terminology, priests are one of the social categories at highest risk and the most difficult to reach in terms of AIDS prevention. We have made attempts at dialogue and education, particularly in the seminaries, on the transmission and treatment of STDs and AIDS. But it’s still very difficult. To talk about the risk of AIDS would mean acknowledging that priests have homosexual practices. And obviously the Church refuses to engage in that debate.’

My conversations with the male prostitutes of Roma Termini (and with the high-class escort Francesco Mangiacapra in Naples) confirm the fact that priests are among the least prudent clients where their sexual acts are concerned.

‘As a rule, priests are not afraid of STDs. They feel untouchable. They are so sure of their position, of their power, that they don’t take these risks into account, unlike other clients. They have no sense of reality.”

“A former spokesman of the World Bank in Africa explains to me when I interview him that most of the priests on the continent live discreetly with a woman; the others are generally homosexual and try to exile themselves to Europe. ‘Africans want the priests to be like them. They like them to be married and have children,’ Calderisi adds.

All the nuncios and diplomats that I have interviewed for this research, and all my contacts in the African coun tries — Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa — that I have visited, confirm the frequency of this double life of Catholic priests in Africa, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual.”

“Pornography, essentially gay pornography, is such a frequent phenomenon in the Vatican that my sources speak of ‘serious addiction problems among the Curia prelates’.”

“Bertone’s homophobia didn’t stop him buying a gay sauna in Rome city centre. It was in such terms, at least, that the press presented this incredible news.

In order to understand this new scandal, I went to the place in question, no. 40 Via Aureliana, the sauna Europa Multiclub. One of the most popular gay establishments in Rome, it is a sports club-cum-cruising spot with saunas and hammams. Frolicking is possible and legal there, because the club is considered ‘private’. You need a membership card to get in, as in most gay places in Italy — a national peculiarity. For a long time, the card was distributed by the association Arcigay; now it is sold for 15 euros by Anddos, a kind of lobby group for the patrons of gay establishments.

‘The membership card is compulsory to get in to the sauna, because the law forbids sexual relations in a public place. We’re a private place,’ Mario Marco Canale, the manager of the Europa Multiclub, says by way of self-justification.

He is both the manager of the Europa Multiclub and the president of the Anddos association. He receives me wearing both hats at the very site of the controversy. He goes on, this time wearing the hat of his association:

‘We have almost 200,000 members in Italy because a large number of bars, clubs and saunas require the Anddos card for entrance.’

This membership-card system for gay venues is unique in Europe. Originally, in the anti-gay, macho Italy of the 1980s, it was designed to make homosexual places safe, keep their clientele loyal and legalize sexuality on-site.

Today, it persists for less essential reasons, under the pressure of the managers of the 70 clubs that form the Anddos association, and perhaps also because it allows the association to wage its struggle against AIDS and receive public subventions.

For several gay militants I have spoken to, ‘this card is an archaic remnant and it’s high time it was got rid of.’”

“According to my information, the sauna only represents part of a vast property complex, also including about twenty priests’ apartments and even one cardinal’s apartment. This was how the press managed to put two and two together and get the eye-catching headline: ‘Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has bought the biggest gay sauna in Italy!’

But the scandal remained disconcertingly amateurish, because the secretary of state and his office had indeed given the green light to this huge property purchase without anyone noticing that it contained the biggest gay sauna in Italy, visible and known to everybody and opening on to the street.”

“When we met, Marco Canale was amused by the controversy, even though he revealed another secret motivation behind it: ‘At the Europa Multiclub we receive lots of priests and even cardinals. And every time there’s a jubilee, a synod or a conclave, we realize immediately the sauna is fuller than usual. Thanks to all the visiting priests!’

According to another source, the number of priests who are members of the Anddos gay association is equally high. It is possible to find out, because to become a member you have to supply a valid identification document; and the person’s profession appears on an Italian ID even if it is immediately anonymized by the computer system.”

“’There is no true justice system in the Vatican. The procedures aren’t reliable, investigations aren’t credible, there is a serious shortage of funds, people are incompetent. There isn’t even a prison! It’s a parody of justice.’”

“Experiencing love under the Vatican constraint: some people manage to do so at the cost of unimaginable pieces of play-acting. I’m thinking of one famous cardinal, among the most highly-ranked of the holy see, who lives with his lover. During a conversation I had with him, in his magnificent apartment in the Vatican, while we were sitting out on a sun-drenched terrace, the cardinal’s companion arrived. Had the conversation gone on for too long, or had the boyfriend come home early? In any case, I sensed the embarrassment of the cardinal, who looked at his watch and quickly put an end to our dialogue, after having unburdened himself to us for several hours previously. As he walked Daniele and me to the entrance of his penthouse, he was forced to introduce his companion with a highly convoluted explanation.

‘He’s my late sister’s husband,’ the old cardinal stammered, probably believing that I would fall for his lie.

But I’d been warned. At the Vatican, everybody knows this cleric’s secret. The Swiss Guards talked to me about his tender companion; the priests of the Secretariat of State joked about the unusual length, by the cardinal’s standard, of this particular relationship. I left the couple in peace, amused by their attempts to pretend that there was nothing between them, and now imagined them starting their little dinner à deux, taking a ready meal out of the fridge, watching television in their slippers and stroking their little dog — a (nearly) bourgeois couple like any other.

We encounter a similar kind of innovative relationship at the home of another cardinal emeritus who also lives with his assistant, which again creates several advantages. The lovers can spend a long time together, without arousing too much suspicion; they can also travel and go on holidays as lovers, because they have a ready-made alibi. No one can question their closeness, given the fact that they are working together. Sometimes the assistants live in the cardinals’ homes, which is even more practical. Once again, no one is surprised. The Swiss Guard have confirmed to me that they have to turn a blind eye ‘whatever company the cardinals took’.”

“A variant of this model has been dreamed up by a cardinal who, after paying for his young men, seems to have settled down. He has developed a charade: every time he goes out, every time he travels, he is accompanied by his lover, whom he introduces as his bodyguard! (An anecdote confirmed to me by two prelates, as well as by the former priest Francesco Lepore.) A cardinal with a bodyguard! In the Vatican, everybody smiles at such extravagance. Not to mention the jealousy that the relationship provokes, because the companion in question is I am told, ‘a knockout’. Another model of love within the Catholic hierarchy involves ‘adoptions’. I know of a good dozen of cases in which a cardinal, an archbishop or a priest has ‘adopted” his boyfriend. It is true, for example, of a francophone cardinal who adopted a migrant of whom he was particularly fond, prompting great surprise among the police, who discovered, when they examined this undocumented individual, that the cleric intended to legalize his companion!

One Hispanic cardinal has adopted his ‘amigo’, who became his son (and remained his lover). Another elderly cardinal whom I visited lives with his young ‘brother’; the nuns who live with them quickly worked out that he was his lover, and give themselves away by calling him his ‘new’ brother.

A renowned priest also told me how he ‘adopted a young Latin American, an orphan, who was selling his body in the street’.”

“