In the Closet of the Vatican Power Homosexuality Hypocrisy Review
In The Sixth Sense film a piddling boy has a hugger-mugger: he can run across expressionless people. It is like with Frédéric Martel, author of In the Cupboard of the Vatican: Ability, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy. Except, he tin can meet gay people. Everywhere. And it is non a underground. He sees the world through a pink prism, darkly.
It even extends to Republic of chile's Pinochet government.
A gay French author, this is not Martel's start such book. In 1999, in that location was The Pinkish and the Black, Homosexuals in France since 1968; in 2002, La Longue Marche des Gays; and in 2014, Global Gay: How Gay Civilization is Irresolute the Earth. Although an atheist it seemed inevitable he would focus on the Cosmic Church with its virulent condemnations of homosexuality. Those he attributes to the deep self-loathing of closeted conservative senior prelates.
The Pinochets "surrounded themselves with a veritable court of Catholic homosexuals," he says. "No one has ever described it in detail: I have to do it here, because information technology is at the heart of the discipline of this book," he says. And he does. With motive.
Of "the dictator'south gay or gay-friendly entourage . . . All are connected to the apostolic nuncio Angelo Sodano." Earlier he tells us Sodano is "the 'villain' of this volume". Sodano is "the eminence noire, not merely grisé in all the black and opacity of the term".
There is also some piquant allusion. Sodano is "a strong personality, even though he appeared very effeminate. He was tall, very bulky, he looked like a mountain."
Very noir(e).
A powerful conservative, at present 91 and Dean of the Higher of Cardinals in Rome, Sodano was papal nuncio to Chile from 1977 to 1988 and Cardinal Secretary of State from 1991 to 2006.
Amongst that gay entourage "closely connected" to Sodano in Chile was Fr Fernando Karadima, we are told. Few heard of this priest until final twelvemonth when Karadima was exposed as a child abuser subsequently a Vatican investigation.
Martel notes that "the official version is that the Vatican was non informed about the Karadima affair until 2010, when Sodano was no longer secretary of country."
He is non put off. "The reasons that led Sodano (likewise equally Primal Errazuriz, who replaced Sodano as secretary of state in 2006) to protect this paedophile priest remain mysterious."
Just Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, former Archbishop of Santiago in Chile, was never Vatican secretary of state.
Martel wonders why, in Republic of chile, Sodano "took such pleasure in associating with the homosexual milieu . . . at the very moment when John Paul II was declaring homosexuality to exist an beastly sin and an absolute evil."
He answers, perhaps because Sodano was "vulnerable – for example, if he was himself homosexual – and was obliged to compromise with the regime to protect his secret."
Far and abroad the most impressive feature of the book is Martel's access to then many senior prelates of the church none of whom, clearly, had the remotest idea what he was planning to write
A looseness with fact is as well evident in Martel's reference to the assail by Pope Francis on the Roman Curia in December 2014, "less than a twelvemonth afterwards his election". Except that Francis was elected in March 2013, all of 21 months beforehand.
More than seriously incorrect are Martel's references to a named Irish bishop who, he claims, "was homosexual (equally the courts made clear in the trials for scandals in his diocese . . .)"
No Irish gaelic bishop has ever been "in trials for scandals in his diocese", or to do with homosexuality.
Martel claims "a young seminarian" said the Irish bishop "embraced him tightly and kissed him on the forehead". Non and so.
The man was not a seminarian. He discussed his vocation with the bishop who embraced him and kissed on the forehead, which the young man felt was "paternal". Subsequently he wondered, and complained. An contained inquiry plant the bishop'south behaviour "was non calumniating".
This arroyo to fact drags In the Cupboard of the Vatican downwards, as does its length. It could be cut by a third without loss.
It is interesting on the Fr Marcial Maciel scandal, hilarious on hard-right cardinals in the church and in its account of the declared wild gay life of noted upholder of family values, the late Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Trujillo. Information technology is hugely entertaining in descriptions of the "the gayest pontificate in history", that of Benedict XVI. But, how true?
Far and abroad the most impressive feature of the volume is Martel's access to then many senior prelates of the church building none of whom, clearly, had the remotest idea what he was planning to write.
Seasoned Vatican observers will be surprised to find John XXIII listed amidst the gays, less so Paul VI, simply the late, crude, American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus of Vatican Bank scandal fame?
Many reading this volume will sympathise with former papal spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi. "All of these accusations of homosexuality are a petty excessive," he tells Martel.
"Of class there are homosexuals [in the church building], that'south obvious. In that location are even a few who are more than obvious than the others. But I refuse to read things that way, and to believe that homosexuality is an explanatory cistron," he said.
Indeed.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-the-closet-of-the-vatican-review-incredible-detailing-of-homosexuality-in-church-1.3821610
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