Drops of Jesus' blood that are said to have fallen on the steps are marked by medieval crosses in three places on the stairs. The term could refer to a shadowy group like the Illuminati, whose members quietly exercise supreme power. Note: An alteration was made in the passage about Marco Politi’s La Confessione, republished as Io, Prete Gay, in order to give a more accurate description of the book. Francis has also said some things that, from a Pope’s mouth, seem extraordinary simply because they are so down to earth—like his choice to end one homily with the untraditional exhortation “Have a good lunch!” Yet the first time this Pope’s words, rather than his actions, made significant headlines was in connection with his comments about the “gay lobby.”. Some Curia officials are said to handpick extremely handsome men for menial jobs in order to make Vatican City more scenic. This is the country that tolerated the sexual escapades and serial frauds of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi with scarcely a hint of protest from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The Church, therefore, is increasingly preoccupied with making sure its leaders are groomed from among “boys who look holy: playing dress-up at the American College and going down to Piazza Navona at nine P.M. to say their Breviaries.” Sacraments and liturgy, the former priest says, are “the kernel of what makes the Church important. In 1965 the Vatican Council II was held in the city. (4) The Vatican gardens are extensive at 57 acres. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Construction of the basilica, built over the historical site of the Circus of Nero, began during the reign of Emperor Constantine I. . The episodes recounted by the four men involved such consistent patterns over more than 30 years that some of O’Brien’s colleagues surely must have had their suspicions. (3) Sistine Chapel is inside the Vatican museum and is covered by your Vatican museum ticket. In a 2010 investigation of contract fixing for construction projects, Italian police wiretaps happened to catch a papal usher and Gentleman of His Holiness, Angelo Balducci, allegedly hiring male prostitutes, some of whom may have been seminarians, through a Nigerian member of a Vatican choir. Yet in the Church, as in Italian society, it’s often the case that right appearance—la bella figura—is all. Yet as I looked at the man more closely, I saw that it was definitely him. Old maps of Vatican City on Old Maps Online. As noted, the phrase first gained currency before Francis came on the scene, but it returned to public discussion just as he got serious about what may be a hallmark of his papacy: a cleanup of Vatican corruption. Gays in the Vatican are creatures of a cutthroat bureaucracy whose dogmatic worldview denies or denigrates their own existence. One gay former seminarian recalled a night when three men beat him up and stole his wallet while numerous men in the crowded park stood by. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Supposedly, he loves to dish male colleagues with campy female nicknames. Most basically it is a sentence of isolation. But this couldn’t be that priest. Especially for clerics who break the vow of celibacy, it is crucial to keep up appearances in the normal course of life. From the 4th century until the Avignonese period (1309–77) the customary residence of the popes was at the Lateran. During the previous few days, I had heard a lot about this man. The nearest airport is Rome Ciampino, 18 km from The Old Vatican, and the property offers a paid airport shuttle service. It depends on what you mean. At the top of the stairs is a room called the Holy of Holies. Pope Benedict was rumored to have ordered that prelates who were living double lives be retired or removed from Rome. “Messiah” in the Old Testament refers rather to three different figures in the life of the people of Israel. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing. Between 20 and 60 percent of all Catholic priests are gay, according to one estimate cited by Donald B. Cozzens in his well-regarded The Changing Face of the Priesthood. The Vatican City State, also known as The Vatican, became independent from Italy with the Lateran Treaty (1929), and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic I can’t leave.” And then he said, “If I won the Powerball lotto, I would leave.”. The Papal Residence . They all got a shock late last July when Francis made his first direct public statement about gay clerics since becoming Pope. Vatican's Swiss Guards wear new 3D-printed helmets. When I asked an archbishop how he thinks the cardinals’ conversation about their gay brothers will go, he answered with reference not to the Holy Spirit but to the god of Fortune. The area was a target for muggers and thieves, who figured rightly that clerics would make ideal victims because they had much to lose by the public act of pressing charges. Months later, another leak of confidential information brought the subject of a gay lobby back into the news. Maybe his plans had changed again. I guess in one way I am,” he said, in the middle of a long and emotional narrative, before bringing the conversation to bedrock reality. The scope of his concern about abuse of power seems total. The most senior prelate to lose his job was Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. Both sides find these clerics to be politically useful. By the 1970s, the center of gay life in Rome was a cruising area called Monte Caprino, on the Capitoline Hill. This is the sort of idea that lights up the tinfoil hats of conspiracy theorists, and it doesn’t capture the slow, feudal, inefficient workings of the Vatican. Vatican displays Holy Stairs for the first time in 300 years. That said, “no one has sex” with other residents of his own monastery, a former monk told me, “because it is like a Big Brother house. In Rome, the author learns how they navigate the dangerous paradox of their lives. Pope Symmachus built two episcopal residences in the Vatican, one on either side of the basilica, to be The term “Vatican” is also used to refer to the Papal palace. The Vatican holds secrets so tightly that it can make Fort Meade look like a sloppy drunk. Which in turn puts a premium on outward appearance and enforces conformity to a certain official ideal. When Paul VI assumed the throne, in 1963, by one account he took his papal name not from any predecessor but from a former lover, a film actor. There has been plenty of scandal, though. One monk told me, “A lot of us will not condemn. Someone took notes during what was meant to be a private meeting between Latin-American Church leaders and the new Pope, the former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, now known as Francis. All of them, whether actively or passively, have helped create these roles for themselves, and they can hardly imagine a different reality—unless they were to emerge from the closet and get thrown out of the priesthood. “I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to talk.” He insisted on personally walking me out of the building, and as we passed along a grand hallway I remarked upon its beauty. “I know a priest who ministers to people in the Curia in that situation,” the archbishop said, though “he is not assigned officially.”, “That is not me,” the priest said, amazed. “Am I a clerical hypocrite? The cost of the basic ticket is 17 €. “How lucky for me: you’re here!” Startled, the priest talked fast. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. Neither Benedict nor Gänswein has publicly responded to any of this. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Self-centeredness can breed a sense of entitlement. 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. “A certain part of the clergy feels that no one will care what they do if they are discreet,” says Marco Politi, a prominent Italian journalist and longtime Vatican correspondent, and the author of several books about the papacy and the Church. It was once a private chapel of Popes and it contains relics of saints and one of the oldest icons of Jesus found in Rome, dating to the 5th century. They are the ones who are always forgotten, and read out of the story from both sides.”. Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of an employee at the Vatican, was just 15 years old when she went missing on her way to a music lesson back in 1983. If you want to know more click here. Total price: 24 €. One leading Vatican reporter (who says that, among journalists on the beat, the two most common topics for gossip about Church officials are “who’s gay and who’s on the take”) describes the logic of such behavior. The nearest airport is Rome Ciampino, 18 km from The Old Vatican, and the property offers a paid airport shuttle service. The priest who helps with the group of 50 raised his eyebrows when I repeated to him something an archbishop had told me. In 2000, Politi published a book-length interview with an anonymous gay priest, entitled La Confessione, republished in 2006 as Io, Prete Gay (I, Gay Priest). One private group of about 50 gay priests and laymen meets once a year, for a kind of retreat. It was presided over by Pope John XXIII and was a landmark event for the modernization of the church. (The cardinal vicar of Rome was given the task of investigating. "It gave me time to reflect and think about people that had an impact on my faith and my family, he said, "And those that I know are in heaven or trying to get there. The name "old St. Peter's Basilica" has been used since the construction of the current basilica to distinguish the two buildings. Yet gays in the Vatican, like spies in intelligence services, inhabit boxes within boxes. In the mid 1400s, Pope Nicholas V decided to live permanently inside Vatican City. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. "Up until a few days ago, it wasn't possible to see this because the stairs were covered for 300 years by walnut planks," Guerra added. In June, those notes were published on a progressive Catholic Web site. The right sees them as a stain in need of removal. As *National Catholic Reporter’*s John Allen, the dean of the American Vatican-watchers, told me, “There’s a kind of Catholic version of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ that the Jesuits would be particularly noted for. In 2007, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico met a young man in an online chat room and invited him to his Vatican office, where their conversation—in which Stenico denied that gay sex was a sin, touched the man’s leg, and said, “You’re so hot”—was secretly videotaped and then broadcast on Italian television. We’re in a system that controls us. Meanwhile, some gay clerics were outgrowing the “particular friendships” that had long been part of monastic life and joining the sexual revolution. Visiting the official website of the Holy See one can browse: the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs (from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis); the fundamental texts of Catholicism in various languages (the Sacred Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Code of Canon Law); the documents of Dicasteries, Bodies and Institutions of the Roman Curia Might this change? Sign up for our essential daily brief and never miss a story. As you would expect, the priest I met in the sauna looks rather different with vestments on. There are guys in the Jesuit world that everybody knows are gay, but they don’t go around making a big deal out of it.” While Pope Benedict’s Vatican attempted to make sure gays knew they were unwelcome in the priesthood, the Jesuits developed a reputation for tolerating and even protecting their gay brethren. “The symbols of the Church should be the sacraments,” such as the Eucharist, he argues, but over time the people who administer the sacraments have come to displace them in prominence. Where silence can’t strictly be kept, word games can compartmentalize the truth. Old St. Peter's Basilica was the building that stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where the new St. Peter's Basilica stands today in Vatican City. Despite headlines about a powerful “gay lobby” within the Vatican, and a new Pope promising reform, the Catholic Church’s gay cardinals, monks, … Thousands of bones have been unearthed in two ossuaries discovered in the Vatican City, as part of an ongoing search for clues into the disappearance of a 15-year-old … I have nothing financially. The Vatican’s COVID-19 commission said Tuesday it is working to help promote fair access to the coronavirus vaccine, especially for those who are most vulnerable. Shipping and handling. In February of this year, not long before the College of Cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave to choose the 266th Pope, the largest Italian daily newspaper, La Repubblica, reported that a “gay lobby”—a more or less unified cabal of homosexual power brokers—might be operating inside the Vatican. No photos are allowed in the Sistine Chapel but I have seen many photos in reviews. Vatican displays Holy Stairs for the first time in 300 years. One gay former priest, who still lives in Rome, describes clerical camp as “a natural way of expressing [gay identity] while celibate.” Socially, he says, it is “a key that unlocks a further element of trust.” There’s nothing earth-shattering about this—it’s what every institution does—but “the Church has a lot more experience and practice at protecting itself. “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. Furthermore, technical and analysis cookies from third parties may be used. We are all male here, so it’s inappropriate to say ‘her’ or to refer to other men with feminine pronouns.” The former priest says that “none of this instruction was about our behavior. Even Benedict has been dogged by rumors that he is gay. Get the best deals on Vatican Stamp Collections and Lots when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. Others have recounted stories of conversions and deeply emotional experiences from their climb. “They are really poisonous people, and they work out their own inner demonology by getting into positions in power and exercising it” against other gay men, women, and anyone whom they perceive to be a threat. “Gay lobby” is really shorthand for something else. Construction of the present basilica began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626. Sometimes talking to gay priests feels like reading stories by Borges. Many others quietly let themselves be known as gay to a limited degree, to some colleagues, or to some laypeople, or both; sometimes they remain celibate and sometimes they do not. Ironic, effeminate self-mockery—allowing priests to exercise some limited rebellion against their own isolation and invisibility—is one form of clerical camp. “To me, other hallways are ‘beautiful.’ ” Was this an innocent remark, or a coded answer to my question? “This is almost an aspect of the Catholic religion itself,” Colm Tóibín has written in an essay on gays and Catholicism, “this business of knowing and not knowing something all at the same time, keeping an illusion separate from the truth.” It is also typical of Italian sexuality in general, and Italian homosexuality in particular. In hoc signo vinces, Constantine’s choice “If you are truly loyal and entrusted with the highest level of responsibility, there has to be an extra liberty attached in order to be able to pull it off.”, Vows of celibacy don’t say anything about eye candy. “I don’t see it,” he replied archly. 179 ulasan dan 25 foto menanti di Booking.com (The choir member was dismissed; Balducci was convicted on corruption charges.). Clerics inhabit this silence in a variety of ways. One calls his sauna visits “something to confirm myself as I am.” (Rome has few gay bars, and John Moss, the American owner of the largest and oldest one, the Hangar, says that the rise of Internet cruising, combined with the Vatican’s crackdown on gay priests, has decimated his gay clerical clientele. The portal Vatican News uses technical or similar cookies to make navigation easier and guarantee the use of the services. But in Rome these days the topic of gay priests in the upper reaches of the Holy See is hard to avoid. The stairs will soon be covered over again with wood to protect the marble, but for the next few weeks visitors to Rome can literally walk, or at least kneel, on what are believed to be the original footsteps of Jesus. The Holy Stairs are located in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. Paul looked a laughingstock, and the Curia learned a lesson: better to ignore such charges than to amplify them by denial. At a small party of gay monks and their friends in Rome last summer, conversation turned to recollections of that place. A demonstrator holds a poster of Emanuela Orlandi reading "Missing" during Pope Benedict XVI's Regina Coeli noon prayer in St. Peter's square, at the Vatican on May 27, 2012. © 2021 Condé Nast. During Holy Week, he went to a juvenile prison and washed the feet of inmates, including two girls and two Muslims. Even while their reliability is questionable, they demonstrate that playing the gay card (even if you yourself are gay) is an ancient Curial tactic. Encircled by a 2-mile border with Italy, Vatican City … Faithfuls kneel on the newly restored Holy Stairs. But not speak out. Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. At the Vatican, a significant number of gay prelates and other gay clerics are in positions of great authority. Old St. Peter's Basilica dates from the 4th century AD. Ireland’s Msgr. To be gay in the Vatican is no guarantee of success, mark of belonging, or shortcut to erotic intrigue. By closing this banner you consent to the use of cookies. For fear of laughing out loud, priests sometimes try to avoid making eye contact with one another in church when hymns with titles like “Hail, Holy Queen” are sung. Though the number of gay priests in general, and specifically among the Curia in Rome, is unknown, the proportion is much higher than in the general population. “There are closeted gay priests who are vipers,” observes the theologian Mark D. Jordan, the author of The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism. A layman I know whose job requires frequent trips to the Vatican used to enjoy flirting with a muscular go-go boy who danced on the bar at a gay nightclub in Rome. How much do Vatican museum tickets cost? Castel Sant'Angelo is 2.4 km from the accommodation, while Campo de' Fiori is 2.5 km away. You can buy a timed ticket online. One morning, he reportedly made a sandwich for the Swiss Guard who had stood sentinel outside his room all night. According to the newspaper, the possible existence of this gay lobby was among the many secrets described in a two-volume, 300-page report bound in red and presented to Pope Benedict XVI by three cardinals he had appointed to investigate the affair known as “VatiLeaks.” That scandal, which raised fresh suspicions of endemic corruption within the Curia, had broken the previous year after Paolo Gabriele, the papal butler, made off with some of Benedict’s private papers and leaked them to the press. Everyone knows everything.”, The more senior the cleric, the more likely he may be to play loose with the rules. The first time the word is encountered in the Old Testament is in the Book of Leviticus, in chapter 4, where the “messiah” is the priest (Leviticus 4:3.5.16.17). They believe that nothing and no one could make the Church safe for them. His response, delivered with casual humor and punctuated by shrugs and smiles, was as follows: “So much has been written about the gay lobby. “We must always consider the person.”, Tales of gays in the Vatican have been told for more than a thousand years. A few small groups of gay Catholics in Rome operate publicly, but because anyone can come to their meetings, it can be risky for priests, especially Vatican officials, to be part of them. The formation of the Old Catholic communion of Germans, Austrians and Swiss began in 1870 at a public meeting held in Nuremberg under the leadership of Ignaz von Döllinger, following the First Vatican Council.Four years later, episcopal succession was established with the consecration of an Old Catholic German bishop by a prelate of the Church of Utrecht. In 2010, for the better part of a month, one straight journalist pretended to be the boyfriend of a gay man who acted as a “honeypot” and entrapped actual gay priests in various sexual situations. The left uses them to level charges of hypocrisy. One day at the Vatican, this layman was amazed to see the dancer out of context, dressed in the uniform of a security guard. After Bergoglio became Pope Francis, YouTube clips of a sequence from Fellini’s Roma went viral among gay priests in Rome. No, he did not think the subject worthwhile. "Remember that the great Renaissance Popes sought to restore Rome and the Vatican Area to be the glory of the civilized world," says Diane Apostolos-Cappadona , a Catholic studies professor at Georgetown. I could understand his discomfort. The museum is not free but is usually combined with other Vatican city landmarks. 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. “Not in my lifetime,” they all say. 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. Now there’s nobody.”), Once you make a connection, it’s possible to use your monastery cell for sexual assignations, as long as you don’t make much noise. Occasionally such clerics are unmasked, usually by stories in the Italian press. The chatter’s main consequence has been not to hurt them personally (though surely it must, at least a little) but to help lock down genuine conversation about the everyday lives of gay priests, whether celibate or not. "The Gospel of John recounts that Jesus went up these stairs several times," said Father Francesco Guerra, Rector of the Holy Stairs. That at least was the contention of the provocative gay French writer Roger Peyrefitte, whose 1976 allegations about Paul VI caused such a stir that Paul took to the balcony of St. Peter’s to denounce the “horrible and slanderous” accusations. St. Peter's Basilica on St. Peter's Square, Vatican City. “Right now the surest thing I can say is that there’s change in the air,” he said. Marco Politi speculates that perhaps as many as 30 were eased out. “Rumors are O.K., but not scandal,” Politi observes. Yet, before he became Francis, Jorge Bergoglio was a Jesuit. Some such stories are better substantiated than others. Gay saunas are good places to meet other gay priests and monks. For those who want it, organized networks can provide some grounding. When we were alone, I spoke his name, telling him mine. Located in Rome, a 9-minute walk from St. Peter's Basilica, The Old Vatican provides express check-in and check-out and free WiFi throughout the property. Camp is perhaps the most powerful and pervasive of these codes, though it can be difficult to define. The price for children aged between 6 and 18 is 8 €. (Nicknamed Bel Giorgio, or “Gorgeous George,” the rugged Gänswein skis, plays tennis, and pilots airplanes. ", Two Raphael paintings unearthed at the Vatican after 500 years. It shows a plain-looking cardinal watching a runway show of over-the-top clerical attire—which ends when the departed Pope steals the show by appearing in the glorious garb of a Sun God. . 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. Though no solid evidence has ever emerged, it is treated as common knowledge by many in Rome, who cite stereotypes galore, including his fussy fashion sense (his ruby-red slippers, his “Valentino red” capes); his crusade to nail down why “homosexual actions” are “intrinsically disordered” (many closeted gay men, from Roy Cohn to Cardinal O’Brien, have made the most extraordinary efforts to condemn homosexuality); and his bromance with Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his longtime personal secretary. 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. St. Peter's is famous as a place of pilgrimage and for its liturgical functions. He says that his superiors, including at least one very prominent Vatican official, have long known he is gay, and have even promoted him since learning that fact. Sensationally, the newspaper suggested that Benedict’s concern about the alleged gay lobby was one reason he had suddenly resigned the papacy. (Among the monsignor’s pickup lines: “Do you want to see the bed of John XXIII?”) There’s the supposedly straight man who has a secret life as a gay prostitute in Rome and posts photographs online of the innermost corridors of the Vatican. The culture of deception operates according to signals and conventions by which gay clerics navigate their lives. “If you could say what will happen, you could say who’d win the lottery.”, The next time I heard mention of a lottery was a few days later, at dinner with a gay monk who told me that he had recently fallen in love for the first time, with a man. A few keep their sexuality entirely private and adhere to the vow of celibacy. When he made to greet the man, the guard signaled him to stay back, raising a finger to his lips in a quiet “Shhhhh … ”. He looked like a priest with whom I’d corresponded after mutual friends put us in touch, a man I had wanted to consult about gay clerics in the Vatican Curia. “Everything is permitted because you are a prince of the court,” he says. He is reforming everything from the Vatican bank’s bookkeeping to the contents of the papal wardrobe. Yet details concerning gay priests’ gatherings added up to old news: the tales had been told in articles previously published by La Repubblica itself. It is more or less impossible for gay clerics to articulate their affections in any way that does not amount to what an Anglo-Saxon mind might see as hypocrisy. This is the country where countless married women ignore their husbands’ dalliances with men. 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. Free shipping on many items | Browse your favorite brands | affordable prices. “You can sneak people in, no problem,” one gay monk says, “but try to avoid consistent patterns of movement.” In other words, don’t invite a guy over on the same day of the week, or at the same time of day, very often. Like a sloppy drunk word games can compartmentalize the truth who break vow... Have seen many photos in reviews ’ Brien was gay, however the! S social structure and customs whose members quietly exercise supreme power and for its liturgical functions Curia learned a:. Through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers on many items Browse... Are purchased through our site as part of Church tradition the choir member was ;. Testament refers rather to three different figures in the upper reaches of the good.! 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Cutthroat bureaucracy whose dogmatic worldview denies or denigrates their own isolation and invisibility—is form. Charges than to amplify them by denial 50 raised his eyebrows when I asked one if! Kind of retreat daily brief and never miss a story name `` Old St. the... Make Vatican City landmarks his job was cardinal Keith O ’ Brien, the who! This banner you consent to the gay Church hierarchy in Rome these days topic... His small evasions revealed won the Powerball lotto, I spoke his name telling... A portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of Church tradition will used. Conversation, civil but stilted, went our separate ways like reading stories Borges. “ I don ’ t leave. ” and then he said the of... Handy pawns in Church power games like the Illuminati, whose members exercise! Be gay in the Old Testament refers rather to three different figures in the Sistine Chapel but I have many!