Hooper writes: "A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom - the report said - were being blackmailed by outsiders."
The Vatican is awhirl with rumours about the pope's decision to retire. (photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images)
Gay Vatican Blackmail Might Have Pushed the Pope Out
24 February 13
potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom - the report said - were being blackmailed by outsiders.
The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.
The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign - the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair.
Last May Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.
According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages - bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election.
The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.
It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."
The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.
La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said: "Neither the cardinals' commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter. Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this."
He added that interpretations of the report were creating "a tension that is the opposite of what the pope and the church want" in the approach to the conclave of cardinals that will elect Benedict's successor. Another Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, alluded to the dossier soon after the pope announced his resignation on 11 February, describing its contents as "disturbing".
The three-man commission of inquiry into the Vatileaks affair was headed by a Spanish cardinal, Julián Herranz. He was assisted by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo, and the Slovak cardinal Jozef Tomko, who once headed the Vatican's department for missionaries.
Pope Benedict has said he will stand down at the end of this month; the first pope to resign voluntarily since Celestine V more than seven centuries ago. Since announcing his departure he has twice apparently referred to machinations inside the Vatican, saying that divisions "mar the face of the church", and warned against "the temptations of power".
La Repubblica's report was the latest in a string of claims that a gay network exists in the Vatican. In 2007 a senior official was suspended from the congregation, or department, for the priesthood, after he was filmed in a "sting" organised by an Italian television programme while apparently making sexual overtures to a younger man.
In 2010 a chorister was dismissed for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later a weekly news magazine used hidden cameras to record priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex.
The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals. But it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered". Pope Benedict has barred sexually active gay men from studying for the priesthood.
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Comments
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Don't you know unicorns are fictional creatures? Besides, they can allegedly only be touched by virgins. Or, maybe be virgins? 8^)
Ha! Sad...but true enough.
N.
It's the public that has grown wiser, we no longer allow the hypocrisy to go unanswered.
The word is delerious.
Time to put the REAL dirty laundry out in the open. That is the only real "fix" to stop the church's criminal behaviour.
All will come to light no matter how hard they try to cover up their ugly underside because even centuries of lies can ultimately be exposed. It won't come soon enough for me.
They teach that no one is going to "heaven" except baptized Catholics, yet they break every commandment and doctrine they try to shove down the throats of their followers.
Let the "outing" be broad and debilitating. The first pope to resign in 600 years just happens to be the former cardinal who, in his official capacity at that time, protected priests who were known sexual abusers.
I think this is no mistake...there 's more to this resignation than most Catholics think.
N.
societyofsacredflowers.org
throw out the crazed mythology of Unicorn,
discard the myth of an external god - watching and judging; A god that was created because people were ignorant of geology, astronomy, medical research, time, biology.
Open the love of yourself and others.
No popes, priests, tithing your money to church, no women walking around in potato sacks, no hell - hell is created by humans.
To use the biblical analogy: it's time to throw the money lenders out of our temple
Eh??????? I mean EH?????? (twice).
What bloody parallel universe are YOU in?
Um, well, that's certainly very interesting. Your comments are as wise as some of others that I've recently read and - who knows? - you may be correct.
The Roman Catholic church may be the original multinational corporation. The Vatican has lots of power in lots of places. Like every big corporation, "the Church" has a few scandals hidden away. Power corrupts.
Lose your tin foil hat?
I say, again, hallelujah. Some mails need blacking.
When it comes to the Vatican, anything is possible. They are not above human tendencies.
Maybe they are being hoisted with their own petards at last.
I've seen some very moving examples of what a priesthood -and at times a sisterhood of nuns- should be in different parts of the world -always in remote, impoverished and isolated areas where the priest has to depend on the goodwill not only of his parishioners but the area or village community outwith his parish too, just to survive.
The Maryknoll sisters also do much for abandoned children unconditionally -they really helped us with the adoption of our daughter in Java, Indonesia.
So where are all the Vatican billions for these truly good ministers in the outer lands when they are so needed for many reasons including food and medicine?
Like any pyramid structure with all the wealth at the top, trickle-down doesn't work, either materially or spiritually.
I prefer the sharing and gifting culture of the American Indians and other indigenous "savages" that the Catholic "Blackrobes" tried to assimilate or exterminate, where the "chief" or most respected elder was often the most materially poor person in the the tribe as it was his appointed task to see all basics distributed.
The invaders and their churches never could comprehend this in their lust for power and wealth.
Paying for male prostitutes and paying off the parents of little boys?
Maybe they are being hoisted with their own petards at last.
I've seen some very moving examples of what a priesthood -and at times a sisterhood of nuns- should be in different parts of the world -always in remote, impoverished and isolated areas where the priest has to depend on the goodwill not only of his parishioners but the area or village community outwith his parish too, just to survive.
The Maryknoll sisters also do much for abandoned children unconditionally -they really helped us with the adoption of our daughter in Java, Indonesia.
So where are all the Vatican billions for these truly good ministers in the outer lands when they are so needed for many reasons including food and medicine?
Like any pyramid structure with all the wealth at the top, trickle-down doesn't work, either materially or spiritually.
I prefer the sharing and gifting culture of the American Indians and other indigenous "savages" that the Catholic "Blackrobes" tried to assimilate or exterminate, where the "chief" or most respected elder was often the most materially poor person in the the tribe as it was his appointed task to see all basics distributed.
The invaders and their churches never could comprehend this in their lust for power and wealth.
Aging's shitty, innit?
REIVERPACIFIC your post is so good it could go up 3 times. As for aging- as my father used to say: "it beats the alternative".
How can you be a hypocrite when you're infallible?
Amazing!
I am amazed at such deep understanding but am not in the least surprised that members of all male institutions like the church and Boy Scouts turn their poorly repressed sexual instincts on each other. Did anyone expect otherwise when this has always been the case?
Let us wallow in understanding and praise instead of partaking in small minded condemnation!
Keep talking to yourself -you're the only one who makes any sense to you.
And while you are at it, why do you even bother with RSN? It works because of open-mindedness inclusiveness and the power of reason however diverse and sometimes disparate and disagreeing.
Show me or point me to a conservative, right-wing forum that doesn't filter opposing viewpoints and I'll go there and try to make a cogent argument or two. So far I've had "No admittance": stuffed down my throat at every attempt.
Your blinkers are showing at every post.
And by the way, o' broad-brush-pai nting, uber-conformist , I NEVER drink Lattes. I prefer "carajillos" (Belt o' espresso with a healthy shot of Fundador brandy and a cube of sugar).
Try it sometime: it might bring you back to life.
Have a nice Nescafé and milquetoast to dip in it.
Amazing!
I love that line! Tell it to the whole GOP AND to the Democrats!
Then maybe the US can begin confronting the depths of depravity in Washington, D. C., and Wall Street, either or both of which are as "intrinsically disordered" as the Vatican.
They get that bilge from Right Wing "think" tanks like the Heritage Institute. It is simply regurgitated propaganda pablum. It's not even clever enough to be offensive, although that is the idea.
Every time I see something ostentatiously diety, corporate or monarchy-aggran dizing like the English crown jewels, the Vatican finery or some privately held corporate art collection "On loan" to some museum struggling for funds to stay open and share what falls from the collections of the powerful, it makes me wish I had the skills to just spirit it all away and leave these throne rooms and heavy-handed collector's vaults barren so that all could be invited to view or experience art and craft as fresh and vibrant as the day they were created in some democratically established location.
As for the gems and diamonds, I've always wondered at the attraction and worship of crowns and miters which have sat on so few heads or been held by so few hands. Especially as most of the gaspers on viewing these have aesthetic vocabularies verging on the non-existent (Does the Mona Lisa HAVE to be mounted in a velvet-lined frame?).
I'm an artist BTW.
So I'll leave you to the Oscars, the latter-day manifestation of this worship of glitterati and the mystery of power and wealth maintained so ruthlessly over so many centuries by such brutal means. O' well at least the Oscars are without executions -just a bunch of gawpers who need to get a life.
I mean, how much do some of these dresses cost again?
Talk about the blind leading the blinded!
Bless you, dear angel.
RELIGION = the search for reward.
http://en.gloria.tv/?media=351791
I went to the site and I read the whole article. The position of the author is that there is a (vast) conspiracy of the homosexuals, inside and outside of the church. The conspirators form a kind of mafia; this mafia is (according with the article), is the culprit, not only of the sexual abuse, but also of the cover up.
Sorry but this explanation does not satisfy me: just think that John Paul II new of the pedophiles in the church but he never said anything, even when he publish an encyclical asking for forgiven for the faults of the church. In that document he didn't said a word about the pedophile priests.
FWIW, pedophilia is almost unknown amongst homosexuals.
I'm not a Catholic, my parents left the church before I was born, but I've seen the massive amout of good done by Catholic Charities, which has to beg for funds which are not forthcoming from the church, and I admire the "Nuns on the bus" so I can't condemn the whole church. I've also known some amazing priests who performed so much good and helped so many that it pains me to see what has become (or rather remained) of the hierarchy.
It's kind of like a police department, the good ones are spectacular people and the bad ones are wretched scumbags.
In 2011, Benedict had appointed David Maria Jaeger, an Israeli-born Zionist Jew converted to Catholism, as a prelate auditor of the Roman Rota, a papal law court that serves as the chief appellate court of the Catholic Church.
John Vennari in January 11, 2013 article, titled, Judaism and the Church: before and after Vatican II, criticized Pope Benedict XVI for distorting the basic Catholic theology to appease the Jews.
“Throughout his writings over the years on the subject of Catholic-Jewish relations, Pope Benedict has neglected to emphasize the duty of Catholics to work and pray for the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic Faith. Instead, his consistent thrust has been to teach that Jews and Christians should be a “common witness” to the one God,” wrote Vennari.
http://rehmat1.com/2013/02/11/pope-benedict-xvi-exit-saddens-chief-rabbi/
It is my firm belief that the above statement shows the insecurity of all religions and their adherents. Why is it in politics and religion people that hold differing beliefs are "demonized?" Why is it that humans only feel comfortable around those that think like themselves? The bottom line is as stated above - insecurity. Think, what kind of forest, or for that matter any ecological zone, would be like if only one species of plant (or animal) grew their .... boring and unstable. It is time to stop conversions and celebrate diversity in all its manifestations. If Catholics want to pray let them pray that the hierarchy of their church act more like their supposed founder.
i understand you're one of those fundamentalist wackos who believe that everyone who doesn't agree with YOUR religion is evil, but we humans don't see it that way.
please don't reproduce, and don't work with children.
we should all work and pray for the conversion of religious fundamentalists of every religion - including catholic, to compassionate humanism.
catholic monk Thomas Merton was a model of spiritual common-ground-f inding with Hindus, Buddhists, etc -- please check out any of his many books -- very inspirng
also please check out the works and writings of PROGRESSIVE catholics like Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers who fought for the rights of the poor, the working class, and for peace ( and also many catholic nuns and priests in South america who were assassinated for their work for the poor working class, resisting the huge multinational corporations)
and also Matthew Fox who was excommunicated for his progressive views but is still going strong!
while the heirarchy at the top is rotten and stinking, and thank god it's getting exposed to the disinfectant of sunlight, there are many everyday catholics doing wonderful work
( I am a pro-choice buddhist/ hindu, for the record)
The sixth commandment its not about ADULTERY but against fornication (inmoral sex, ie. homosexual sex, promiscouity, sex outside marriage, with minors, etc)
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