Vatileaks: Vatican Properties Used as Brothels and Massage Parlours for Priests

Last month the bitter old men at the so-called Synod on the Family at the Vatican voted to maintain the Church's anti-gay and anti-woman.  Now, perhaps in retaliation or to merely humiliate the  corrupt and homophobic Roman Curia, a purported mole in the Vatican has leaked information suggesting that numerous Vatican owned properties in Rome are being used as brothels and massage parlors frequented by Catholic priests.   A piece in The Independent looks at this latest scandal and again notes that the Vatican owns the property that is home to Europe's largest gay sauna.  Equally delicious are reports that the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, a/k/a The Inquisition, is involved  with some of the properties.  Here are highlights:

Vatican-owned properties in Rome are operating as seedy saunas and massage parlours where priests pay for sex, according to the latest in a series of leaked reports to embarrass the Church.

It is also claimed that Vatican officials are allowing buildings to be rented out at peppercorn rents as favours to powerful colleagues and turning a blind eye to shady property deals, as well as allowing addresses to be used as red-light establishments.

Among the properties mentioned in the document, made public by a Vatican mole, are premises in two streets close to the Italian Parliament and a solarium near Piazza Barberini, according to press reports.

One particular Vatican department, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, has been highlighted in the list. It owns hundreds of high-value properties in central Rome, worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Two years ago it emerged the Vatican had purchased a €23m (£16m) share of a Rome apartment block, 2 Via Carducci, which housed the Europa Multiclub, Europe’s biggest gay sauna. Tales of visiting priests were legion, and a section of the sauna’s website promoting special “bear nights” included a video of a hirsute man stripping down and changing into a priest’s outfit.

Meanwhile, sources quoted by Ansa news agency said that Pope Francis hoped to close the leak investigation and draw a line under the affair before the Vatican’s special Jubilee Year, which begins on 8 December. Some observers believe the leaks are part of a campaign to undermine his effort to reform the Curia.

One senior figure, Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, and another official have been arrested by Vatican police over the leaks, while it has emerged that four cardinals have also been questioned.

Why do I find the word "hypocrites"  on my lips? 

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan On John Paul II and His Defenders

John Paul II blessing the monster Maciel

It's no secret that I view the canonization of John Paul II as nothing less than a travesty and an illustration that liberal Catholics who want to believe that Pope Francis is substantively a breath of fresh air are deluding themselves.  In response to a piece by Peggy Noonan - who seems to have lost all reason - comparing Pope John Paul II to Barack Obama in terms of leadership, Andrew Sullivan lets loose with an honest assessment of John Paul II's reign that bares repeating and which ought to be mandatory reading for every churchgoing Catholic.  Here are the money quotes:

Under John Paul II and his orthodoxy-enforcer, Joseph Ratzinger, the scope for any dialogue within the church was essentially ended. Whole areas of theological debate were ruled impermissible; discussions about faith and morals were also discouraged and any hints of heterodoxy, i.e. thinking, were monitored and punished. John Paul II’s papacy was capable of detecting the most trivial form of theological dissent and punishing it relentlessly, while it found itself miraculously blind when it came to the endless rapes and abuse of children and adolescents that we know now were endemic.

This wasn’t leadership; it was the abdication of basic moral responsibility for the church John Paul II ran. And these were not only crimes of commission but also of omission. A monstrous figure like Marciel Macial was lionized by John Paul II even as he sold drugs, was a bigamist,  abused countless young men, and even raped his own son. Cardinal Bernard Law was rewarded for his own disgusting cover-up of child-rapists with a sinecure in Rome.

Open your eyes, Peggy. There is world outside your 1980s nostalgia-fest. And it’s as different from your reality as “seems” is from “is”.

I may not always agree with Andrew - who I did get to meet a few years ago - but when he lets loose on someone, few do it better.

Vatican Melrose Place: Two Popes, One Secretary

Things don't get much more bizarre than sexuality at the Vatican.  On the one hand we see a bunch of bitter old men - many closeted queens - incessantly condemning sex of more or less any kind (especially if the participants enjoy it) while on the other hand we see truly strange relationships that look an awful lot like gay relationships whether consummated or not.  Leading the way in the later category is the relationship of Benedict XVI's personal secretary whom some in the past have deemed to be Benedict's boyfriend.  Whatever the true nature of the relationship, it's weird in my opinion.  Andrew Sullivan looks at the utterly bizarre situation that will follow Benedict XVI's abdication.  Here are highlights:

The damage Benedict XVI has done to the Catholic church and the papacy may be far from over. All I can say about yesterday’s developments is that they seem potentially disastrous and also indicative to me of something truly weird going on underneath all of this.

Benedict XVI has claimed that his almost unprecedented resignation came about simply because of his physical infirmity in the face of what appears to be a growing vortex of sexual and financial scandal inside the Vatican. He said he would quietly disappear to serve the church through prayer and meditation. But we now realize he’s going nowhere. He’s staying in the Vatican’s walls, and retaining the honorific “His Holiness.”

If you were trying to avoid any hint of meddling, of a Deng Xiao Peng-type figure pulling strings behind the scenes, you would not be doing this. The only thing the Pope will give up, apparently, are his red Prada shoes.  .  .  .  . But this is what really made me sit up straight, so to speak:

Benedict’s trusted secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, will be serving both pontiffs — living with Benedict at the monastery inside the Vatican and keeping his day job as prefect of the new pope’s household. Asked about the potential conflicts, Lombardi was defensive, saying the decisions had been clearly reasoned and were likely chosen for the sake of simplicity. “I believe it was well thought out,” he said.

So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement? I wrote a while back about Gänswein’s intense relationship with Ratzinger, while noting Colm Toibin’s review of Angelo Quattrochi’s exploration of Benedict, “Is The Pope Gay?”

This man – clearly in some kind of love with Ratzinger (and vice-versa) will now be working for the new Pope as secretary in the day and spending the nights with the Pope Emeritus. This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

These bitter old queens have no concept of what normal relationships, gay or straight, are like, yet take it upon themselves to lecture others and denigrate gays and gay rights even as they participate in a world wide conspiracy to protect child rapists.   It simply doesn't get any stranger or filled with hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy.