LifeSite News: New Book by Gay Sociologist Claims Homosexual Subculture Inside Vatican is Rampant, but Covered Up

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By Maike Hickson and John-Henry Westen, LifeSiteNews, February 15, 2019

ANALYSIS

February 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A new book to be released on the first day of the February 21-24 Vatican summit on sexual abuse is likely to upset many on both sides of the supposed ideological divide in the Church.

The author, Frederic Martel, is a sociologist and homosexual activist. He is all for changing the Church’s teachings against homosexuality, even suggesting that bishops who fight homosexuality strenuously are themselves repressed homosexuals. Nonetheless, the book reveals, at times from purported first-hand accounts, that high-ranking prelates in Rome – many of whom are named in the book – were aware of the active homosexuality of clergy but only expected them to keep it secret, rather than take remedial action.

Professor Roberto de Mattei, a leading defender of orthodoxy in the Church, has condemned Martel’s book as a “fiasco” seeking to “disqualify the Churchmen faithful to Tradition; to prevent the debate on the scourge of homosexuality in the Church, especially at the next summit.” Prof. de Mattei adds, however, that “the LGBT support to Pope Francis will certainly not help” the Pope in an agenda to liberalize the Church. The “cardinals and bishops demonized in the book will come out stronger after this attack so badly conducted,” he adds.

One advocate for the LGBT cause, Father James Martin, S.J., praises the book for exactly the same reasons de Mattei condemns it. But Martin is worried the book will “backfire.” It will, the pro-homosexual Jesuit worries, “lead to a renewed and intensified witch hunt for gay priests.” It will also, he warns, “based on admittedly deep reporting on one part of the church, serve to confirm the stereotype of the sexually active gay priest in all parts of the church. It will therefore make it less likely for gay priests to speak openly about their situations.”

Martel claims in his book that the majority of the clergymen working in the Vatican are homosexuals, but this claim must be tempered by his patently false belief that all those who fight homosexuality are themselves homosexual. However, it’s plausible that he spoke with many high-ranking prelates and priests and, being himself a homosexual, has had direct access to some homosexually active clergymen in the Vatican. Martel’s specific description of the state of affairs in the Vatican, he says, is based on interviews with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, and 45 papal nuncios, as well as 200 priests and seminarians (and with the help of some 80 correspondents, translators, and collaborators).

Monsignor Battista Ricca, the controversial head of Santa Marta – the Pope’s residence – is said to have invited Martel for a visit at Santa Marta. Ricca, notorious for his homosexual exploits, seems to have been a key player granting Martel access to the Vatican and its homosexual network.

‘The higher one is in the Church’s hierarchy, the higher the number of homosexuals’

The first chapter of the book, made available to LifeSiteNews, shows a homosexual network in the Vatican similar to the one described by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò – a presence even the Pope himself acknowledged when he spoke of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican.

“Homophilic cardinals,” Martel explains, “privilege those prelates who have the same inclination and who themselves choose gay priests. The nuncios – the ambassadors of the Pope who are charged with the selection of bishops – among whom the percentage of homosexuals reaches records, themselves work on a ‘natural’ selection.” Many priests, he adds, are being promoted for a “given favor.” Thus, Martel claims that “the higher one is in the Church’s hierarchy, the higher the number of homosexuals.” He says for the Vatican, the rule is that “homosexuality is the norm, heterosexuality the exception.”

Although not released, those who have read the book tell LifeSite that it shows that Pope Francis is working with various cardinals and bishops in the Vatican to alter the Church’s teaching to normalize homosexuality. Martel praises Pope Francis and even calls him “the most gay-friendly pope of the modern popes.” According to the French sociologist, due to his liberalism, the Pope is being exposed to a “violent campaign” by “conservative cardinals who are very homophobic.”

Martel makes it clear that his book is intended to help Pope Francis in his attempt to stop the “rigidity” behind which “there is often to be found a double life.” (Martel reads the Pope as suggesting it is the “traddies” and “conservatives” who are the “rigid” ones leading “double [lives].”)

In line with the Pope’s warning about people who lead “a double life,” Martel hopes that the Vatican will drop the facade and just come out as being mostly homosexual, thus normalizing homosexual relationships within the Church. Martel says: “50 years after Stonewall [1969 riots in New York City organized by LGBT activists] – the homosexual revolution in the U.S. – the Vatican is the last bastion to be liberated!”

Book quotes archbishop who says 80 percent of Vatican clergy are homosexual

The book reveals the lax way the Vatican has treated homosexuality for decades. The homosexual author, however, proposes solutions contrary to the 2,000-year-old tradition of the Catholic Church. For example, Martel says that “by forbidding priests to marry, the Church became sociologically homosexual,” and thereby points to celibacy as the underlying problem which promotes this double life of the prelates (including sexual abuse they commit) that he claims to be calling out.

Martel quotes in his first chapter an archbishop who tells him that 80 percent of Vatican clergy are homosexual and that three out of the last five popes have been “homophilic,” to include “certain of their assistants and Secretaries of State.” He also often extensively quotes as a key witness in his first chapter laicized priest Francesco Lepore. Lepore was ordained in 2000 and worked as a Latin translator at the Vatican. In conversations with Martel, Lepore names cardinals and other high-ranking prelates he says are homosexuals.

Most importantly – and this story has been confirmed by some of the prelates themselves – Lepore describes how, after he started to work at the Vatican, he became more lax in his priestly life. He was not celebrating Mass regularly and began wearing civilian clothes more and more. Due to this evident change of life – he started to live out his own homosexuality when he came to Rome for his work – some Vatican officials thought it was fitting to remove him entirely from the Vatican.

However, Lepore told Martel, at the time there were two influential men in the Vatican who protected him: Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz – then John Paul II’s personal secretary – and the editor of L’Osservatore Romano at the time. Both men “succeeded in my remaining at the Vatican,” Lepore tells Martel. Subsequently, Lepore was removed from his translation post, but named special secretary to Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s “foreign minister,” who he says knew of Lepore’s moral problem.

When Lepore’s Vatican computer was years later (around 2015) found to have various opened homosexual websites on it, he was removed from his position. However, Lepore says Cardinal Tauran at the time only told him that he “should have been more careful.”

“He did not rebuke me for being gay, he only accused me of letting myself caught!” Lepore told Martel.

Lepore describes the reaction of a bishop and other high-ranking prelates whom Lepore told about his first homosexual relationship. He says they just told him to “keep it secret,” but that he “should not feel guilty about it.”

According to Martel, after he had left the priesthood, Pope Francis thanked Lepore for having kept his life “discreet.”

“Toleration with discretion” is the Vatican motto, says Martel.

It is this very secrecy and double life that Martel says he wants to end. Deprived of any belief in supernatural grace, Martel cannot imagine a celibate priesthood and thus sees hypocrisy everywhere. His deplorable attacks and insinuations against Cardinal Raymond Burke – insinuating that he is a drag queen – are a case in point.

While fraught with admitted bias, the book may reveal some of the underbelly of the rampant homosexual network in the Vatican. The difficulty with the book comes down to discernment of what is the author’s conjecture and what is worthwhile information to be gleaned about the state inside the Vatican.

.https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-book-by-gay-sociologist-says-homosexual-subculture-inside-the-vatican-i