In the Closet of the Vatican

by Frédéric Martel

  At this point in the conversation, I ask Francesco Lepore to estimate the size of this community, all tendencies included.

  ‘I think the percentage is very high. I’d put it at around 80 per cent.’

  During a discussion with a non-Italian archbishop, whom I met several times, he confirmed to me: ‘Three of the last five popes are said to have been homophilic, some of their assistants and secretaries of state too, as well as most cardinals and bishops in the Curia. But it isn’t a matter of knowing whether those Vatican priests have this kind of inclination: they do. It’s a matter of knowing – and this, in fact, is the true debate – whether they are practising or non-practising homosexuals. That’s where things get complicated. Some prelates who have inclinations do not practise homosexuality. They might be homophilic in their life and culture, but without having a homosexual identity.’

  Over the course of about a dozen interviews, Francesco Lepore told me about the mad gaiety of the Vatican. His testimony is incontestable. He has had several lovers among archbishops and prelates; he has been propositioned by a number of cardinals, whom we discuss: an endless list. I have scrupulously checked all of those stories, making contact myself with those cardinals, archbishops, monsignori, nuncios, assistants, ordinary priests or confessors at St Peter’s, all basically homosexual.

  For a long time Lepore was inside the machine. And yet it is easy, when a cardinal discreetly hits on you, or when a monsignore shamelessly propositions you, it’s easy to spot the ‘closeted’, the practising gays and other members of the ‘parish’. I’ve experienced that myself. The game’s too easy! Because even when you’re a confirmed bachelor, locked away in a closet that could easily be a safe, and you’ve taken a vow of heterosexual celibacy, there’s always a moment when you give yourself away.

  Thanks to Lepore, and soon, by a process of networking, thanks to 28 other informants, priests and laymen, within the Vatican – and openly gay with me – I knew from the beginning of my investigation where to go. I had identified the ones who were ‘of the parish’ before I’d even met them; I knew the assistants to approach and the names of the monsignori whom I would have to befriend. There was no shortage.

  I will never forget the endless conversations with Lepore in the Roman night during which, when I mentioned the name of a particular cardinal or archbishop, I would immediately see him growing animated, exploding with joy and finally exclaiming, waving his hands in the air: ‘Gayissimo!’

  For a long time Francesco Lepore was one of the favourite priests in the Vatican. He was young and charming – even sexy. He was also a highly literate intellectual. He charmed both physically and intellectually. During the day he translated the pope’s official documents into Latin and answered the letters addressed to the holy father. He also wrote cultural articles for l’Osservatore romano, the official Vatican newspaper.

  Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, at the time prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, agreed to write a preface to a collection of Lepore’s erudite essays, and praised the young priest.

  ‘I have a very pleasant memory of that time,’ Lepore told me, ‘but the homosexual problem remained, more pressing than ever. I had a sense that my own life no longer belonged to me. And then I was very quickly drawn to the gay culture of Rome: I started attending sports clubs, heterosexual at first, but people knew about it. I started celebrating mass less and less often, going out in plain clothes, without my cassock or dog-collar; I soon stopped sleeping at Saint Martha’s. My superiors were informed of it. They wanted me to change jobs, perhaps remove me from the Vatican, and it was then that Mgr Stanisław Dziwisz, the personal secretary to Pope John Paul II, and the director of the Osservatore Romano, for which I was writing, intervened in my favour. They managed to allow me to stay in the Vatican.’

  In this book we will often bump into Stanisław Dziwisz, now a retired cardinal in Poland, where I met him. For a long time he was one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, effectively running it with the cardinal secretary of state Angelo Sodano, as John Paul II’s health deteriorated. It would be a euphemism to say that a dark legend surrounds this enterprising Polish cleric. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; readers will have all the time in the world to understand the system.

  So thanks to Dziwisz, Francesco Lepore was appointed private secretary to Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, a very influential Frenchman, a seasoned diplomat and ‘minister’ of foreign affairs for John Paul II. I would meet Tauran four times, and he would become one of my regular informants and contacts at the Vatican. In spite of his fathomless split personality, I developed an affection for this extraordinary cardinal, who suffered terribly from Parkinson’s for a long time before he finally succumbed to it in the summer of 2018, just as I was revising the final version of this book.

  Thanks to Tauran, who was well aware of his homosexuality, Lepore pursued his life as an intellectual in the Vatican. Then he worked for the Italian cardinal Raffaele Farina, who ran the Vatican library and the secret archives, and then for his successor, Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès. He was in charge of the publication of rare manuscripts; he edited collections of theological colloquia published by the official presses of the holy see.

  ‘My double life, that searing hypocrisy, weighed upon me terribly,’ Lepore continues. ‘But I hadn’t the courage to chuck it all in and abandon the priesthood.’

  Finally, though, he revoked his calling, carefully working out the best way to do so without causing a scandal.

  ‘I was too cowardly to resign. Out of weakness, I ensured that the decision didn’t come from me.’

  According to the version he gives me (which is confirmed by Cardinals Jean-Louis Tauran and Farina), he ‘deliberately’ chose to consult numerous online gay sites, accessing these on his computer from the Vatican, and to leave his session open, with compromising articles and websites.

  ‘I knew very well that all the Vatican computers were under tight control, and that I would be spotted quickly. And that’s what happened. I was called in and things happened very quickly: there was no trial, and no punishment. It was suggested that I return to my diocese, where I would take up an important position. Which I refused.’

  The incident was taken seriously; it deserved to be, in the eyes of the Vatican. Then Francesco Lepore was received by Cardinal Tauran, ‘who was extremely sad about what had just happened’.

  ‘Tauran kindly rebuked me for having been naïve, for not having known that “the Vatican had eyes everywhere”, and that I would have to be more cautious. He didn’t blame me for being gay, just for having been spotted! And that’s how things came to an end. A few days later I left the Vatican; and I stopped being a priest once and for all.’

  2

  Gender theory

  An ante-room? A study? A boudoir? I’m in the sitting room of the private apartment of the American cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, an official residence in the Vatican, Via Rusticucci in Rome. It’s a strange and mysterious room, which I observe minutely. I’m on my own. The cardinal hasn’t arrived yet.

  ‘His Eminence is held up outside. He will be here soon,’ I am told by Don Adriano, a Canadian priest, elegant and slightly uptight: Burke’s assistant. ‘Are you up to date with current events?’

  On the day of my visit the American cardinal had been summoned by Pope Francis to receive a talking-to. I should add that Burke had launched countless provocations and protests against the holy father, so much so that he was considered his number-one opponent. For Francis, Burke was a Pharisee – hardly a compliment coming from a Jesuit.

  Within the pope’s entourage, the cardinals and monsignori I’ve interrogated are amused: ‘Son Éminence Burke est folle! [His Eminence Burke is insane!]’ one of them says to me, insisting with French grammatical logic on the feminine adjective.

  This feminization of men’s titles is surprising, and it took me a lot of time to get used to hearing the cardinals and bishops of the Vatican being tal
ked about in this way. If Paul VI was in the habit of expressing himself in the first person plural (‘We say …’), I learn that Burke likes to be spoken of in the feminine: ‘Votre Éminence peut être fière’; ‘Votre Éminence est grande’; ‘Votre Éminence est trop bonne’ (‘Your Eminence can be proud’; ‘Your Eminence is great’; ‘Your Eminence is too kind’).

  More cautious, Cardinal Walter Kasper, an intimate of Pope Francis, merely shook his head in consternation and disbelief when I mentioned Burke’s name, even calling him mad – but ‘fou’, in the masculine.

  More rational in his criticism, Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit considered to be one of the men behind the pope, with whom I have often chatted at the offices of the journal La Civiltà Cattolica, which he edits, explains: ‘Cardinal Burke led the opposition to the pope. Those opponents are very vehement and sometimes very wealthy, but there aren’t many of them.’

  One Vaticanologist told me the nickname by which the American cardinal was known in the Curia: ‘The Wicked Witch of the Midwest’. And yet when faced with this rebellious Eminence who had assumed the task of defending tradition, Pope Francis didn’t mince his words. Beneath the façade of a smiling and jovial man, he is in reality a hard nut. ‘A sectarian’, say his detractors, of whom there are now many in the Vatican.

  The holy father sanctioned Cardinal Burke, stripping him without warning of his post of prefect in charge of the supreme court of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s appeal tribunal. By way of consolation, he was then appointed promoveatur ut amoveatur (kicked upstairs), the pope’s representative at the Order of Malta. With the grand title of ‘Cardinalis Patronus’ – the cardinal patron of the order – Burke went on defying the successor of Peter; this brought him a new warning from the ruling pontiff on the day of my arrival.

  The origin of this new confrontation is something you couldn’t make up: a distribution of contraceptives! The Order of Malta, a sovereign religious order, carries out charitable work in lots of countries around the world. In Burma, some of its members were said to have distributed contraceptives to seropositive people to avoid new infections. After a knockabout internal inquiry, the ‘Grand Master’ accused his number two, the ‘Grand Chancellor’, of authorizing the condom campaign. Then, in a Pasolinian scene, the Grand Master dismissed the Grand Chancellor from his duties in the presence of the pope’s representative: Cardinal Burke.

  Ite, missa est? Hardly. Things cranked up another notch when the pope learned that the settling of scores between rivals was a contribution to this argument and that he understood exactly who and what was involved (control over the way in which a fund of 110 million euros, sheltered in a bank account in Geneva, would be distributed) and summoned Burke to ask him to explain himself. The Order of Malta is like indeed like many religious congregations, a mad den of gaiety.

  Greatly displeased, Francis decided to reinstall the Grand Chancellor by force, in spite of the opposition of the Grand Master, who invoked the sovereignty of his organization and the support of Burke. This tug of war, which held the Curia in suspense, came to an end with the resignation of the Grand Master and the placing of the order under trusteeship. As for Burke, severely rejected, while he had kept his title he had been stripped of power and transferred to become the pope’s ‘substitute’. ‘The holy father left me the title of Cardinalis Patronus, but now I don’t have a single function. I’m no longer kept informed either by the Order of Malta or by the pope,’ Burke would go on to lament.

  It was during one of the episodes of this rollicking TV mini-series, while Burke had been summoned by the pope’s entourage, that I had a meeting with him. And while Burke was being taught his lesson, I waited for the cardinal at his home, alone, in his ante-room.

  In fact I wasn’t really alone. Daniele Particelli had joined me in the end. This young Italian journalist had been recommended to me a few months before by seasoned colleagues, and he frequently came with me when I did my interviews. Researcher and translator, dogged fixer, Daniele, whom we will encounter frequently throughout this book, would be my chief colleague in Rome for almost four years. I still remember our first conversation.

  ‘I’m not a believer,’ he told me, ‘which allows me to be freer and more open-minded. I’m interested in everything to do with the LGBTQ community here in Rome, the parties, the apps and the gay underground scene. I’m also very into computers; very much a geek, very digital. I’d like to be a better journalist and learn to tell stories.’

  That was the start of our professional collaboration. Daniele’s boyfriend cultivated species of exotic plants; he himself was supposed to spend every evening looking after Argo, a pedigree Pembroke Welsh Corgi, which required special treatment. The rest of the time he was free to help me with my investigations.

  Before Daniele, I approached other Roman journalists to help me, but they all proved to be careless or distracted; too militant or not militant enough. Daniele liked my subject. He didn’t want to take revenge on the Church, and he wasn’t indulgent towards it either. He just wanted to do some neutral journalistic work, following the model of the excellent articles in the New Yorker and what is known as ‘narrative non-fiction’; and that corresponded to my project. He aspired to do ‘straight journalism’, as they call it in the States: factual journalism with facts, nothing but the facts, and ‘fact-checking’. He would never have imagined that the world he was going to discover with me would be so unlikely and so ‘unstraight’.

  ‘I’m sorry. His Eminence has informed me that he will be a little late,’ Burke’s assistant, a visibly embarrassed Don Adriano, comes to tell us again.

  To fill the silence, I ask him if we are in the cardinal’s apartment or in his office.

  ‘His Eminence has no office,’ the young priest tells me. ‘Elle travaille chez elle. [Her Eminence works at home.] You can go on waiting here.’

  Cardinal Burke’s ante-room, a vast place that will stay in my memory for ever, is a kind of huge drawing room, at once classical, luxurious and Spartan. ‘Bland’, you might say. In the middle of the room is a dark wooden table, a modern copy of an antique model, placed on a rug that matches the furniture; we are surrounded by a set of red, yellow and beige carved wood armchairs whose curved armrests are decorated with the heads of sphinxes or maned lions. On a chest of drawers is a Bible open on a lectern; on the table, an arrangement of dried pine cones, braided and glued together – the ornamental art of elderly dandies. A complicated lampshade. Some precious stones and dreadful religious statues. And table mats! On the walls, a library with well-filled shelves and a huge portrait of a cleric. The portrait of Burke? No – but the idea crosses my mind.

  I guess that Burke is a hero to his young assistant, who must lionize him. I try to strike up a conversation about the sex of angels, but Don Adriano turns out to be shy and far from talkative, before he leaves us alone again.

  When waiting becomes awkward, I leave the drawing room at last. I take the liberty of wandering about the cardinal’s apartment. All of a sudden I happen upon a private altar in a fake iceberg setting, an altarpiece in the form of a colourful triptych, like a little open chapel, embellished with a garland of blinking lights, with the cardinal’s famous red hat in the middle. A hat? What am I saying: a headdress!

  Then I find myself remembering the extravagant photographs of Raymond Leo Burke, so often mocked on the internet: the diva cardinal; the dandy cardinal; the drama-queen cardinal. They must be seen to be believed. Looking at them, you start imagining the Vatican in a different light. Laughing at Burke is almost too easy!

  My favourite picture of the American prelate isn’t the most spectacular. It shows the 70-year-old cardinal sitting on an asparagus-green throne twice as large as he is, surrounded by silvery drapery. He wears a fluorescent yellow mitre in the shape of a tall Tower of Pisa, and long turquoise gloves that look like iron hands; his mozzetta is cabbage-green, embroidered with yellow, lined with a leek-green hood revealing a bow of crimson and pomegranate lace
. The colours are unexpected; the accoutrements unimaginable; the overall image eccentric and very camp. It is easy to caricature a caricature.

  Don Adriano surprises me as I meditate on the cardinal’s red hat, and guides me with the gentleness of a chamberlain towards the toilets, which I tell him I’m looking for.

  ‘This way,’ he murmurs, with a tender glance.

  While His Eminence Burke is being told off by Francis, here I am in his bathroom, the place where he performs his ablutions. A strange wet room worthy of a deluxe spa resort, and heated like a sauna. The luxury soaps, with their subtle perfumes, are arranged in the Japanese style, and the little towels folded on medium-sized ones, which are in turn arranged on large ones, and the large ones on very large. The toilet paper is new, and set in a protective cover that guarantees its immaculate purity. As I am leaving, in the corridor, I find dozens of bottles of champagne. High-class champagne! But why on earth would a cardinal need so much alcohol? Isn’t frugality commanded by the Gospels?

  Not far off I spot a mirrored wardrobe, or perhaps a ‘psyche’, one of those tilting mirrors that lets you see yourself all at once, which I find enchanting. If I had performed the experiment of opening the three doors at the same time I would have seen myself as the cardinal did every morning: from all sides, surrounded by his image, enwrapped in himself.

  In front of the wardrobe: impressive red bags, fresh from the shop – was it Gammarelli again, tailor to the popes? Inside the hatboxes: the cardinal’s headdresses, his fake fur coats and his red trapezoid outfits. I feel as if I’m behind the scenes of the film Fellini’s Roma when they’re preparing the extravagant ecclesiastical fashion parade. Soon some priests on roller-skates will appear (to get to paradise faster); priests in wedding dresses; bishops in blinking lights; cardinals disguised as standard lamps; and, the chief attraction, the Sun King in his full splendour, garlanded in mirror and lights. (The Vatican demanded that the film be banned in 1972, even though it’s been confirmed to me that it was shown on loops in the gay-friendly dormitories of certain seminaries.)