In the Closet of the Vatican

by Frédéric Martel

  In the end, Francis had found his formula: ‘Behind the rigidity, there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life.’ The phrase, shortened to make it more effective, would often be repeated by his entourage: ‘The rigid who lead a double life.’ And while he has never mentioned names, it isn’t hard to imagine which cardinals and prelates he has had in mind.

  A few months later, on 5 May 2017, the pope resumed his attack, almost in the same terms: ‘There are those who are rigid with the double life: they appear handsome and honest, but when no one can see them they do bad things … They use rigidity to cover up weaknesses, sins, personality disorders … The rigid hypocrites, the ones with the double life.’

  Again, on 20 October 2017, Francis attacked the cardinals of the Curia whom he described as ‘hypocrites’, ‘living on appearance’: ‘Like soap bubbles, [these hypocrites] hide the truth from God, from other people and from themselves, showing a face with a pious image to assume the appearance of holiness … On the outside, they present themselves as righteous, as good: they like to be seen when they pray and when they fast, when they give alms. [But] it is all appearance and in their hearts there is nothing … They put make-up on their souls, they live on make-up: holiness is make-up for them … Lies do a lot of harm, hypocrisy does a lot of harm: it is a way of life.’

  Francis would go on repeating these ideas, as in October 2018: ‘They are rigid. And Jesus knows their souls. And we are shocked by that … They are rigid, but behind rigidity there are always problems, serious problems … Be careful around those who are rigid. Be careful around Christians, whether they are lay people, priests or bishops, who present themselves to you as “perfect”. They are rigid. Be careful. They lack the spirit of God.’

  Francis has repeated these formulations, severe if not accusatory, so frequently since the beginning of his pontificate that we must admit that the pope is attempting to pass a message to us. Is he attacking his conservative opponents by denouncing their double game concerning sexual morality and money? That much is certain. We can go further: the pope is warning certain conservative or traditional cardinals who reject his reforms, by making them aware that he knows about their hidden life. (This interpretation is not mine: several Bergoglian cardinals, archbishops, nuncios and priests have confirmed this strategy on the part of the pope.)

  Meanwhile, the mischievous Francis has gone on talking about the gay question in his own way, which is to say the Jesuit way. He has taken a step forward, then a step back. His tiny-step policy is ambiguous and often contradictory. Francis doesn’t always seem to do joined-up thinking.

  Is it a simple matter of communication? A perverse strategy for playing with the opposition, sometimes stirring it up and other times soft-soaping it, since he knows that for his opponents the acceptance of homosexuality is a fundamental problem and a private question? Are we dealing with a weak-willed pope who blows hot and cold out of intellectual weakness and a lack of conviction, as his detractors have said to me? Even the keenest Vaticanologists are a bit lost. Pro-gay or anti-gay, it’s hard to tell. ‘Why not have a beer with a gay?’ Francis suggested. In essence that is what he has done, several times, at his private residence in Santa Marta or during his travels. For example, he unofficially received Diego Neria Lejarraga, a transsexual, born a woman, accompanied by his girlfriend. On another occasion, in 2017, Francis officially received at the Vatican Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg with his husband, Gauthier Destenay, a Belgian architect.

  Most of these visits were organized by Fabián Pedacchio, the pope’s private secretary, and Georg Gänswein, the prefect of the pontifical house. In photographs, we see Georg warmly greeting his LGBT guests, which has a certain piquancy when we bear in mind Gänswein’s frequent criticisms of homosexuals.

  As for the Argentinian Pedacchio, who is less well known to the wider public, he has become the pope’s closest collaborator since 2013 and lives with him in Santa Marta, in one of the rooms beside Francis’s, number 201, on the second floor (according to a Swiss Guard I interviewed, and to Viganò in his ‘Testimonianza’). Pedacchio is a mysterious figure: his interviews are rare, or have been deleted from the internet; he doesn’t talk much; his official biography is minimal. He is also the subject of below-the-belt attacks from the right wing of the Roman Curia.

  ‘He’s a hard man. He’s something like the bad guy that every good and generous man needs by his side,’ I am told by Eduardo Valdés, the former Argentinian ambassador to the holy see.

  In this classical dialectic of ‘bad cop’ and ‘good cop’, Pedacchio was criticized by those who didn’t have the courage to attack the pope directly. So the cardinals and bishops in the Curia denounced Pedacchio’s rickety life and dug up an account that he’s said to have opened on the social dating network Badoo to ‘look for friends’ (that page was closed down when its existence was revealed by the Italian press, but it remains accessible in the memory of the web and what is known as the ‘deep web’). On this Badoo account, and in his few interviews, Mgr Pedacchio states that he loves opera and ‘adores’ the cinema of the Spanish director Pedro Almódovar, having seen ‘all of his films’ which, as he acknowledges, contain ‘hot sexual scenes’. His vocation is supposed to have come from ‘quite a special’ priest who changed his life. As for Badoo, Pedacchio denounced a cabal against him and swore that it was a fake account.

  Deaf to the criticisms addressed to his most immediate entourage, Pope Francis continued his tiny-step policy. After the massacre of 49 people in a gay club in Orlando, Florida, the pope said, closing his eyes in a sign of grief: ‘I think that the Church must apologize to the gay people that it has offended [just as it must also] apologize to the poor, to women who have been exploited, to the young who have been deprived of work, and for having given its blessing to so many [military] weapons.’

  In parallel with these merciful words, Francis has been inflexible on the subject of ‘gender theory’. Eight times between 2015 and 2017 he expressed opinions against the ideology of ‘gender’, which he calls ‘demonic’. Sometimes he does so superficially, without knowing about the subject, as he did in October 2016 when he denounced the French school textbooks that propagate ‘a sly indoctrination of gender theory’, before the French publishers and the Ministry of National Education confirmed that ‘these textbooks contain no mention of or reference to this gender theory’. The pope’s error apparently has its source in genuine ‘fake news’ passed on by the Catholic associations close to the French far right, and that the sovereign pontiff repeated without checking.

  One of Francis’s secretaries is a discreet monsignore who replies each week to about fifty of the pope’s letters, among the most sensitive. He agrees to meet me, under cover of anonymity.

  ‘The holy father doesn’t know that one of his secretaries is a gay priest!’ he confesses to me proudly.

  This priest has access to all parts of the Vatican, given the function that he holds with the pope, and over the past few years we have made a habit of meeting up regularly. At one of these meals, in the restaurant Coso on Via Lucina, my source tells me a secret that no one knows, and that shows yet another facet of Francis.

  Since his memorable phrase ‘Who am I to judge?’ the pope has started receiving a large number of letters from homosexuals thanking him for his words and asking him for advice. This huge correspondence is managed at the Vatican by the services of the Secretariat of State, and more particularly by the section of Mgr Cesare Burgazzi, who is in charge of the holy father’s correspondence. According to Burgazzi’s entourage, whom I have also interviewed, these letters are ‘often desperate’. They come from seminarians or priests who are sometimes ‘close to suicide’ because they can’t reconcile their homosexuality with their faith.

  ‘For a long time we replied to those letters very conscientiously, and they bore the holy father’s signature,’ my source tells me. ‘The letters from homosexuals were always treated with a great deal of consideration and
skill, given the considerable number of gay monsignori at the Secretariat of State.’

  But one day Pope Francis decided that he was dissatisfied with the management of his correspondence, and demanded that the service be reorganized. Adding one disturbing instruction, according to his secretary: ‘Suddenly, the pope asked us to stop replying to letters from homosexuals. We had to classify them as “unanswered”. That decision surprised and astonished us. Contrary to what one might imagine, this pope is not gay-friendly.’ (Two other priests in the Secretariat of State confirmed the existence of this instruction, but it is not certain that it came from the pope himself; it may have been suggested by one of his aides.)

  From the information at my disposal, the monsignori of the Secretariat of State still went on ‘doing resistance work’, as one of them put it: when homosexuals or gay priests express their intention to kill themselves in their letters, the pope’s secretaries get together to put the holy father’s signature to a comprehensive reply, but using subtle euphemisms. Without intending to do so, Pope Francis therefore continues to send merciful letters to homosexuals.

  4

  Buenos Aires

  The picture is known as the ‘photograph of the three Jorges’. It’s in black and white. The future pope, Jorge Bergoglio, on the left, dressed as a clergyman, is in seventh heaven. On the right we recognize Jorge Luis Borges, the greatest Argentinian novelist, almost blind now, with his big glasses and a serious expression. Between these two men is a young seminarian in a dog-collar, lanky and disturbingly handsome: he is trying to dodge the camera and lower his eyes. It’s August 1965.

  This photograph, discovered only a few years ago, has prompted a number of rumours. The young seminarian in question is over 80 today, the same age as Francis. His name is Jorge González Manent. He lives in a town about thirty kilometres west of the Argentinian capital, not far from the Jesuit college where he studied with the future pope. They took their first religious vows together at 23. Close friends for almost ten years, they explored deepest Argentina and travelled within Latin America, particularly to Chile, where they studied together in Valparaiso. One of their famous compatriots had made the same journey a few years before: Che Guevara.

  In 1965, Jorge Bergoglio and Jorge González Manent, always inseparable, were working in a different establishment, the College of the Immaculate Conception. There, at the age of 29, they invited Borges to join their literature course. The famous photograph is said to have been taken after the class.

  In 1969, the two Jorges went their separate ways: Bergoglio was ordained a priest and González Manent left the Society of Jesus. Defrocked even before being frocked! ‘When I started studying theology, I saw the priesthood from very close quarters, and felt uneasy. [And] when I left, I told my mother I’d rather be a good layman than a bad priest,’ Jorge González Manent said. Contrary to rumours, González Manent doesn’t seem to have abandoned the priesthood because of his inclinations; in fact, he left to marry a woman. Recently, he published his private memoirs of his years with the future pope in a little book entitled Yo y Bergoglio: Jesuitas en formación. Does this book contain a secret?

  Strangely, the book was withdrawn from bookshops and made unavailable even in the shop of the publishing house that issued it in the first place, where – I checked on the spot – it is listed as having been ‘withdrawn at the request of the author’. Neither was Yo y Bergoglio deposited by the publisher in Argentina’s national library (I looked), which is a legal obligation. A mystery!

  Rumours about Pope Francis are far from rare. Some of them are true: the pope did indeed work in a stocking factory; he was also a bouncer in a nightclub. On the other hand, certain pieces of gossip dreamed up by his opponents are fake, like his alleged illness and the notion that he ‘lacks a lung’ (whereas, in fact, only a small part of one, on the right, was removed).

  An hour’s drive west from Buenos Aires: the Jesuit seminary El Colegio Máximo de San Miguel. There I meet the priest and theologian Juan Carlos Scannone, one of the pope’s closest friends. I’m accompanied by Andrés Herrera, my main ‘researcher’ in Latin America, an Argentinian, who organized the meeting.

  Scannone, who receives us in a little sitting room, is over 86, but he has a perfect recollection of his years with Bergoglio and Manent. On the other hand, he has completely forgotten the photograph of the three Jorges and the vanished book.

  ‘I think Jorge lived here for 17 years, first as a student of philosophy and theology, then as a Jesuit provincial, and finally as the rector of the college,’ Scannone tells me.

  The theologian is direct and sincere, and unafraid of any question. We discuss very openly the homosexuality of a number of influential Argentinian prelates with whom Bergoglio has been in open conflict, and Scannone confirms or denies, name by name. On gay marriage, he is equally clear: ‘Jorge [Bergoglio] wanted to give all rights to homosexual couples; that was really his idea. But he wasn’t in favour of marriage, because of the sacrament. The Roman Curia, on the other hand, was hostile to civil partnerships. Cardinal Sodano was particularly inflexible. And the nuncio in Argentina was also very hostile to civil partnerships.’ (The nuncio at the time was Adriano Bernardini, a comrade of arms with Angelo Sodano, who has had appalling relations with Bergoglio.)

  We talk about Francis’s intellectual and psychological moulding, in which his Jesuit past and his journey as the son of Italian migrants hold a special place. The stereotype that ‘Argentinians are basically Italians who speak Spanish’ is not mistaken in his case!

  On the question of ‘liberation theology’ Scannone repeats rather mechanically what he has written in a number of books. ‘The pope has always been favourable to what is called the preferential option for the poor. So he does not reject liberation theology as such, but he is opposed to its Marxist origins and opposed to any use of violence. He has privileged what we in Argentina call a “people’s theology”.’

  Liberation theology is a major intellectual trend in the Catholic Church, particularly in Latin America, and, as we will see, an essential point in this book. I have to describe it, because it will assume central importance in the big battle between the homosexual clans at the Vatican under John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis.

  This post-Marxist ideology defends the figure of Christ by radicalizing him: it argues for a church of the poor and the excluded, and for solidarity. First popularized at the Latin American Bishops’ Conference in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, it was only given its name later in the writings of the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, who asks ceaselessly how to tell the poor that God loves them.

  During the 1970s, this composite trend, based on a heterogeneous collection of thinkers and texts, spread throughout Latin America. In spite of their divergences, the liberation theologians shared the idea that the causes of poverty and misery are economic and social (they still ignore factors related to race, identity or gender). They also argue for a ‘preferential option for the poor’, against the grain of the Church’s classical language about charity and compassion: liberation theologians see the poor not as ‘subjects’ to be helped, but as ‘actors’ who are masters of their own narrative and their liberation. Finally, this intellectual movement is essentially communitarian: its starting point is in the land and the base, particularly in church communities, ‘popular pastorals’ and favelas, and in this it also breaks both with a ‘Eurocentric’ vision and with the centralism of the Roman Curia.

  ‘Originally, liberation theology comes from the streets, the favelas, the base communities,’ I am told during a meeting in Rio de Janeiro by the Brazilian Dominican Frei Betto, one of the major figures of this current of thought. ‘It was not created in universities, but in the heart of ecclesial or base communities, the famous CEBs. Theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff went on to systematize these ideas. First of all, the fact that sin is not a personal but a social question. By and large we should be less interested in individual masturbation than in the
exploitation of the masses! Then, this theology feeds off the example of Jesus Christ, who modelled his action on that of the poor.’

  Some liberation theologians were communists, supporters of Che Guevara, close to the guerrilla movements of Latin America, or sympathetic to Fidel Castro. Others, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, would be able to shift their attitudes, taking into account the defence of the environment, identity issues among the Latin American indigenous peoples, women or people of African descent, and opening themselves up to questions of ‘gender’. In the 1990s and 2000s, the most famous theologians, Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutiérrez, would start taking an interest in questions of sexual identity and gender, contrary to the official positions of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

  Was Jorge Bergoglio close to liberation theology? That question has provoked intense discussions, all the more so in that the holy see launched a violent campaign against this trend in the 1980s, and reduced many of its thinkers to silence. At the Vatican, Francis’s ‘liberationist’ past, and his association with these turbulent priests, was emphasized by his enemies and played down by his supporters. In an instruction manual and work of propaganda, Francis, the American Pope, two journalists from the Osservatore Romano firmly rejected any connection between the pope and this way of thinking.

  The people close to Francis that I interviewed in Argentina are less categorical. They are aware that Jesuits in general, and Francis in particular, have been influenced by these left-wing ideas.

  ‘I have distinguished four currents within liberation theology, one of which, the people’s theology, is a better reflection of Jorge Bergoglio’s thought. We didn’t use the category of class struggle taken from Marxism, and we clearly rejected violence,’ Juan Carlos Scannone explains.