Frederic Martel, a French sociologist and author of the book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, boldly told reporters at a press conference at the Foreign Press Association in Rome on Feb. 20 that “the great majority” of the more than 200 members of the College of Cardinals are homosexual and suggested that many are leading double lives.
While it has been widely reported that, according to the book, 80 percent of the priests working in the Vatican are gay, at the press conference Mr. Martel sought to distance himself from this dramatic allegation. He said the figure was told to him by a priest whom he interviewed for the book. “I do not validate or non-validate this. How can one say?” he told reporters.
Asked by America for proof to justify his assertion that “the great majority” of cardinals in the church today are homophiles, Mr. Martel offered no pertinent reply.
A central thesis of his book is that cardinals and bishops who make the strongest condemnations of homosexuality are more likely to be gay themselves; he describes this as part of their attempt to cover up who they really are.
Writing in a tabloid manner, Mr. Martel reports what his various sources told him about this or that Vatican prelate or cardinal. Having told these stories over many pages, he sometimes adds: “Of course one cannot be certain that this is exactly the case.” Such awkward qualifications raise a question of basic journalistic ethics: Why does he write something that casts suspicion or calls into question the integrity of so many persons without providing solid proof?
Nobody can doubt that there are gay priests working in the Vatican, just as there are gay people in almost any international organization of a comparable size. But to report—as Mr. Martel does, based on what others have told him and or what he believes he has himself observed or deduced during his investigation—that roughly 80 percent of Vatican staff are gay and to imply, as he does, that many are leading double lives certainly raises questions of credibility and verification.
Mr. Martel said a 300-page document that includes sources, notes and unpublished chapters would be made available online on the book’s publication day.
Mr. Martel said a 300-page document that includes sources, notes and unpublished chapters would be made available online on the book’s publication day.
The toying with the figure of 80 percent reveals one of the fundamental weaknesses of this book of 550-plus pages. It will be released in eight languages (including English) in 20 countries on Feb. 21, the day Pope Francis opens the Vatican summit on the protection of minors in the church.
Questioned about this timing, Mr. Martel sought to downplay the financial benefits gained from launching the book on a day when the international media will be focused on the Vatican. Instead he argued that there is a connection between the book and the summit, which is to be found in the Vatican’s culture of secrecy. He claimed that, especially since the time of Pope Paul VI, Vatican culture has not only covered up the homosexuality of cardinals and bishops but also led many of them to protect abusers of minors because they did not want their own sexual histories to be revealed.
Mr. Martel presented the Italian edition of the book, called Sodoma, at today’s press conference. He claimed that during his research for the book, he conducted some 1,500 interviews over four years with a variety of persons connected to the Vatican in 30 countries, including the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and the Vatican City State. He said those interviewed included 42 cardinals, 52 bishops or prelates, 27 gay priests, no less than 45 Holy See diplomats and foreign ambassadors and 11 Swiss Guards, as well as male prostitutes and former Vatican employees who no longer work in the ministry and are living openly gay lives. He recorded the interviews and was assisted by some 80 researchers, translators, local journalists or “fixers” and—perhaps most significantly, given that he often walks a fine line that risks sliding into defamation—some 15 lawyers in different countries.
He told the press that “only a gay person” could have written this book, as only he could “understand the codes and the system” of gay life in Rome; a heterosexual “could not.” He denies the existence of “a gay lobby” in the Vatican but affirmed that there is “a great silent majority of homosexuals” living in isolation like “monads” there. He asserts that there is “a lie” at the heart of the Vatican system, where the great majority of priests are gay, and said that “by imposing celibacy and chastity [on priests], the church has become sociologically homo-sexualized.” He claims his investigation “uncovered” a gay subculture in the Vatican and in the world’s episcopates.
Mr. Martel’s book raises many questions, but it also produces a toxic cloud of suspicion over many cardinals, bishops and priests that will be difficult to dissipate or neutralize. He told the press that he is not targeting individuals but is only aiming at a fraudulent system, and yet he admits that he does “out” the late Colombian Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, citing evidence that he was a practicing homosexual, as well as the nuncio in Paris, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, and some others.
Mr. Martel said that the real “villain” of his book is the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, who served as nuncio in Chile for 10 years during the Pinochet dictatorship and later as secretary of state to John Paul II. He charges that the cardinal “knew all about the abuse cases” in Chile, regarding Fernando Karadima; in Mexico, regarding Marcial Maciel; in Peru, about the Sodalicio; and in the United States, regarding the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. He argues that Cardinal Sodano “should be investigated by the Vatican judicial authorities.”
He alleges that Pope John Paul II was homophobic and surrounded by closeted gay men who issued many anti-gay statements.
Mr. Martel also takes aim at the Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II’s private secretary, who he says was deeply involved in those cases. He alleges that Pope John Paul II was homophobic and surrounded by closeted gay men who issued many anti-gay statements. He describes Pope Benedict XVI as “a repressed homophile.” But he defends Pope Francis, whom he sees as surrounded “by queens” and caught in a trap, attacked by right-wing forces that seek to link homosexuality to pedophilia. Mr. Martel strongly denies this link, pointing to the fact that so many girls have also been abused.
Pope Francis has recently been accused of covering up Mr. McCarrick’s abuses. But Mr. Martel charges that, like Cardinal Sodano, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state under Pope Benedict XVI, also knew of Mr. McCarrick’s abuses. He noted that Pope John Paul II promoted Mr. McCarrick and gave him the red hat. He charges that, along with Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul knew about the abusive behavior of Mr. McCarrick, as did Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who has “a homophile psychology and belongs to that pro- gay current that he denies.”
In this book, Mr. Martel, who says he was a Catholic up to the age of 12 and has since been attracted to left-wing Catholicism in France, calls into question the integrity not only of many people, including cardinals, bishops, other prelates and popes, but also of the church.
If you like gossip, anecdotes, salacious stories and innuendo about people in high places in the church, then you will probably like this book. But if you are looking for hard evidence, documentation, separation of fact from assumption or other forms of proof to sustain the allegations or claims being made in this text, then you will be disappointed.
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