In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy by Frédéric Martel (Bloomsbury, London, 2019). Hbk. 576 pages. £17.99.
Frédéric Martel has produced a formidable work, some 570 pages, the result of interviews with 48 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 11 Swiss guards and over 200 priests and seminarians in more than 30 countries over four years. Despite its subject, it is not a salacious book, though it contains many amusing anecdotes.
Referring to the pontificate of John Paul II, Martel reports:
In the pope’s immediate entourage, there was … a trio of bishops who were quite remarkable in their way because they operated as a gang...
The first is an archbishop who is always presented as an angel with the face of a saint, and whose beauty has caused tongues to wag.
When I meet him today, almost thirty years later, he is still a handsome man… His inclinations have been confirmed by many sources, and he is even said to have been removed from the diplomatic service ‘after being caught in bed with a black man’, I am told by a priest in the Secretariat of State who slept with the man in question several times.
The second bishop close to John Paul II played an important role in the preparation of papal ceremonies. He also appears in photographs beside the holy father. Known for his sadomasochistic practices, he was said to have dressed all in leather when he frequented the Sphinx, a cruising club in Rome, now closed.
An expression used about him became famous at the Vatican: ‘Lace by day, leather by night.’ (pp 254-55).
The third member of the ‘gang’, Martel says, was given to financial manipulation and ‘affairs with boys’. The extract gives a flavour of the reports given to Martel, apparently by a variety of sources currently in the Vatican, ex-officials and current or former diplomats.
Martel was brought up as a Catholic in Avignon, but abandoned religion around the age of 14 and describes himself as ‘a Catholic atheist’. His aim in writing the book, he says, was to expose a system created by compulsory celibacy that causes suffering to those who are part of it but, more importantly, makes the Church ‘sociologically homosexual’ and leads to a culture of secrecy that encourages a cover-up of sexual abuse. An important part of his thesis is that the prelates who publicly denounce homosexuality are usually the most active ‘members of the parish’, to use Vatican inhouse jargon. Alongside the exotic specimens is the model Martel describes as ‘a great classic of the holy see’, sleeping with one’s private secretary or assistant.
Martel devotes one chapter of his book to interviews with male prostitutes working in the square surrounding Rome’s Termini railway station and other well-known cruising areas.
The young men, mostly migrants from Eastern Europe or Africa, say that priests are an important sector of their clientele; some, but by no means all, work in the Vatican. One theme of these often moving interviews is the priests’ desperate need for tenderness, to create, or invent, a relationship. Martel uses this as evidence for his argument of the damaging effect compulsory celibacy has had on the lives of priests. His findings on prostitution were subsequently confirmed by police officers.
The periods to which Martel devotes most time are the pontificates of John Paul II (1978–2005) and Benedict XVI (2005–2013). Both popes, he says, surrounded themselves with gay officials, and John Paul was taken in by the Mexican Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, subsequently exposed as a serial abuser and expelled from the priesthood by Benedict XVI. Maciel found favour with John Paul for his anti-communism, and for the resources he was able to bring to the Pope's crusades, and it has been said of the Polish pope that he was so absorbed in his anti-communist crusade, and his travels, that he took little interest in the running of the Vatican.
Martel quotes Krzysztof Charamsa as saying that Benedict XVI presided over ‘the gayest pontificate in history’. Charamsa is the former priest who lost his job in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously called the Inquisition) when he came out as gay in 2015. Martel discusses Benedict’s mild manner and his fondness for ermine-trimmed capes and red moccasins and, to the point of obsessiveness, his relationship with his handsome secretary, Georg Gänswein, described by Time magazine as ‘the Heartthrob from the Vatican’. Gänswein plaintively told Vanity Fair: ‘Being goodlooking is not a sin,’ and Martel concludes that there was no more to their relationship than the ‘loving friendship’ (amor amicitiae) approved by Thomas Aquinas.
Benedict’s unexpected resignation, Martel believes, was triggered by his discovery of widespread homosexuality among the clergy in Cuba on his visit to the island in 2012. This, he says, was the tip of the iceberg; below the surface of the water were the activities of his courtiers, which were now impossible to ignore.
Martel finds Pope Francis inconsistent in his statements on homosexuality, despite his famous ‘Who am I to judge?’ remark. But Francis’ vehement attack on the curial cardinals, referring to ‘double lives’, makes Martel think the Pope has rumbled the curia.
Nevertheless, despite the Pope’s own move from the Vatican palace to live in more modest surroundings of the Casa Santa Marta, reform of this corrupt renaissance court clearly has a long way to go.
Francis McDonagh has worked for two leading Catholic development agencies, translates for the international theological journal Concilium, and is an occasional contributor to the Tablet.