To be gay in the Vatican is no guarantee of success, mark of belonging, or shortcut to erotic intrigue. Most basically it is a sentence of isolation. Gays in the Vatican are creatures of a cutthroat bureaucracy whose dogmatic worldview denies or denigrates their own existence. They live in a closet that has no door. Among recent Popes, Benedict made the most concerted effort to sharpen Church doctrine on homosexuality, which he once called “a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.” He tried to cull gays from clerical ranks, most notably in 2005, when men with known “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” were prohibited from being ordained, even if they were celibate.
Denunciation and exposure have made gay priests figures of fascination—though less as people than as symbols—especially to the secular far left and the religious far right. Both sides find these clerics to be politically useful. The left uses them to level charges of hypocrisy. The right sees them as a stain in need of removal. They all got a shock late last July when Francis made his first direct public statement about gay clerics since becoming Pope.
During an impromptu press conference aboard the papal jet, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Rome after his first overseas trip, Francis was asked about the so-called gay lobby. His response, delivered with casual humor and punctuated by shrugs and smiles, was as follows: “So much has been written about the gay lobby. I still haven’t run into anyone in the Vatican who has shown me an identity card with ‘gay’ on it.” He pantomimed holding up such a card in his left hand and then went on: “When you find yourself with a person like that, you have to distinguish between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of somebody forming a lobby. . . . If a person is gay and is searching for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?”
He spoke these words with a palpable warmth, unlike the embattled, wary tone that other Popes have adopted. This may well have been the first time in history that a Pope has publicly uttered the term “gay”—the word that most men who feel romantic love for other men use to describe themselves—instead of the pathologizing 19th-century medical term “homosexual.” Then, in a lengthy interview with a Jesuit journal, the Pope went further, stating that the Church’s ministry should not be “obsessed” with a few divisive moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage. “When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” the Pope asked rhetorically. “We must always consider the person.”
– Michael Joseph Gross
"The Vatican's Secret Life"
Vanity Fair
December 2013
"The Vatican's Secret Life"
Vanity Fair
December 2013
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Gay Men in the Vatican Are Giving the Rest of Us a Bad Name
Why I Take Hope in Pope Francis' Statement on Gay Priests
Astounded
Homosexuality in the Priesthood
A Fact That Should Be Neither Surprising Nor Derogatory
Officially Homophobic, Intensely Homoerotic
Blaming the Gays
Report: Homosexuality No Factor in Abusive Priests
Donohue's "Blame the Gays" Tactic Refuted by John Jay Study Researcher
Bill Donohue's Homophobic Claims Refuted by Bishops' Study
In a Right Gay Tizzy: The Catholic Hierarchy's War on Gays
Let's Face It: The Catholic Church is a Gay Institution
Keeping All the Queens Under One Roof
Vatican Stance on Gay Priests Signals Urgent Need for Renewal & Reform
Catholic Church Can Overcome Fear of LGBT People
Quote of the Day – November 21, 2010
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