‘We mustn’t oversimplify the debate,’ says Romilda Ferrauto, a journalist from Radio Vatican who took part in both synods, seeking to add some perspective. ‘There were genuine debates that shook the holy see. But there weren’t liberals on one side and conservatives on the other. There wasn’t such a clean break between left and right; there were a lot of nuances, a lot of dialogue. Cardinals can follow the holy father on financial reform and not on morality, for example. As for Pope Francis, he was presented by the press as a progressive. That isn’t precisely true: he’s merciful. He has a pastoral approach: he holds his hand out to the sinner. It isn’t the same thing at all.’
Apart from the cardinals mobilized all over the world, and the Curia, which was agitated and chaotic, the pope’s team was also interested in intellectuals. These ‘opinion-formers’, Baldisseri’s gang reckoned, would be vital for the success of the synod. Hence the development of a large and secret plan of communication.
Behind the scenes, an influential Jesuit, Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, was active in this respect. ‘We’re not an official journal, but all of our articles are reread by the Secretariat of State and are “certified” by the pope. We might call it an authorized journal, semi-official,’ Spadaro tells me in his office in Rome. And what an office! The Villa Malta, Via di Porta Pinciana, where the journal is based, is a magnificent location in the area around the Villa Medici and the Palazzo Borghese.
Always jet-lagged and caffeined up, Antonio Spadaro, with whom I have had six interviews and dinners, is the pope’s pilot fish. He’s both a theologian and an intellectual, a rare beast in today’s Vatican. His closeness to Francis makes people jealous: he is said to be one of his éminences grises; in any case, one of his unofficial advisers. Young, dynamic and charming, Spadaro is an impressive man. His ideas fly around with obvious speed and intelligence. The Jesuit is interested in all kinds of culture, particularly literature. He already has several books to his credit, including a far-sighted essay on cyber-theology and two biographical works on Pier Vittorio Tondelli, the Catholic homosexual Italian writer who died of AIDS at the age of 36.
‘I’m interested in everything, including rock music,’ Spadaro says to me over dinner in Paris.
Under Francis, the Jesuit journal has become a space for experimentation in which ideas are tested and debates launched. In 2013 Spadaro published a first long interview with Pope Francis, shortly after his election. It’s a milestone text. ‘We spent three afternoons together for that interview. I was surprised by his openness of mind, his sense of dialogue.’
In a way, this famous text sets out the road map for the coming synod. In it, Francis puts forward his innovative ideas and his method. On the questions of sexual morality and communion for divorced couples, he argues in favour of a collegial and decentralized debate. It was also then that Francis first unveiled his ideas about homosexuality.
Spadaro won’t let go of the gay question, pushing Francis on his entrenchments and leading him to sketch out a truly Christian vision of homosexuality. The pope asks that homosexuals be accompanied ‘with mercy’, and he imagines pastoral care for ‘irregular situations’ and the ‘socially wounded’ who feel ‘condemned by the Church’. Never has a pope had so much empathy and, let’s say the word, fraternity, for homosexuals. It’s a genuine Galilean revolution! And this time, his words certainly weren’t improvised, as they might have been for his famous phrase: ‘Who am I to judge?’ The interview has been minutely edited and every word carefully weighed (as Spadaro confirms to me).
For Francis, however, the crux lies elsewhere: it’s time for the Church to move away from questions that divide believers and concentrate instead on the real issues: the poor, migrants, poverty. ‘We can’t only insist on questions bound up with abortion, homosexual marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. It’s not possible … It isn’t necessary to go on talking about it all the time,’ the pope says.
Apart from this crucial interview, Antonio Spadaro would mobilize his international networks to support the pope’s positions on the family. So, in 2015, points of view and interviews favourable to Francis’s ideas flourished in the journal La Civiltà Cattolica. Other experts were enlisted by Spadaro or by the secretariat of the Synod, like the Italian theologians Maurizio Gronchi and Paolo Gamberini, or the Frenchmen Jean-Miguel Garrigues (who is close to Cardinal Schönborn) and Antoine Guggenheim. Guggenheim immediately began defending the recognition of homosexual unions in the French Catholic daily La Croix. ‘The recognition of a faithful and enduring love between homosexual people,’ he writes, ‘whatever their degree of chastity, seems to me to be a hypothesis worth studying. It might take the form that the Church usually gives to prayer: a blessing.’
On a trip to Brazil during the same period, Spadaro also met a pro-gay priest, a Jesuit like himself, Luís Corrêa Lima. They had a long conversation, in the residence of the Society of Jesus at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, about ‘pastorals in favour of homosexuals’, organized by Father Lima. Charmed by this idea, Spadaro commissioned an article on the subject for La Civiltà Cattolica, although it would not be published in the end. (Apart from Mgr Baldisseri, Kasper and Spadaro, I interviewed Antoine Guggenheim and Jean-Miguel Garrigues, who confirmed the overall strategy. I also met Father Lima in Rio de Janeiro, and went with him to the favela of Rocinha, where he celebrates mass every Sunday, and to the space where those LGBT ‘pastorals’ are held.)
Another high-level intellectual followed the pre-Synod debates with great attention. An Italian Dominican, also a theologian – discreet and loyal – he lives in the Priory of Saint-Jacques, adjacent to the famous library of Saulchoir in Paris.
Brother Adriano Oliva is a reputed medieval historian, a seasoned Latinist and a doctor of theology. Most significantly, he is one of the world’s most eminent authorities on Saint Thomas Aquinas: he presided over the famous Leonine Commission responsible for the critical edition of the works of the medieval thinker – a seminal work.
So why did Oliva unexpectedly mobilize himself at the beginning of 2015, and set about writing a risky book in favour of the remarriage of divorcees and the blessing of homosexual unions? Is it possible that the Italian Dominican was directly encouraged by the secretariat of the Synod, if not the pope, to intervene in the debate?
Saint Thomas Aquinas, as we know, is generally the guarantee on which conservatives rely to oppose all sacraments for divorcees or homosexual couples. Tackling this subject head-on is therefore hazardous and strategic at the same time. The title of the book, which was published shortly afterwards, is Amours.
It’s rare these days to read such a courageous work. Even though it is erudite, analytic and written for specialists, Amours is, in only 160 pages, a minutely detailed work undermining the moralistic ideology of the Vatican, from Paul VI to Benedict XVI. Brother Oliva takes as his starting point a twofold doctrinal failure of the Church: the contradictions in its discourse on the remarriage of divorcees, and the impasse in which it has found itself over homosexuality. His project is clear: ‘The aim of the present study is to show that a desirable change on the part of the Magisterium concerning homosexuality, and the exercising of sexuality by homosexuals, corresponded not only to contemporary anthropological, theological and exegetical studies, but also to developments of a theological tradition, Thomist in particular.’
The Dominican attacks the dominant interpretation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas: relating to the heart of the doctrine, not its margin. Oliva: ‘We are used to considering as “against nature” not only sodomy but also the homosexual inclination. Saint Thomas, on the other hand, considered this inclination “within the nature” of the homosexual person seen as an individual.’ Oliva relies on the ‘brilliant intuition’ of the angelic doctor: the ‘natural “against nature”’ through which one can explain the origin of homosexuality. And Oliva observes, in almost Darwinian fashion, that ‘Saint Thomas places the origin of homosexuality o
n the level of the natural principles of the species.’
For Saint Thomas, man, with his irregularities and singularities, is therefore part of the divine plan. The homosexual inclination is not against nature, but comes from the soul. Oliva again: ‘homosexuality does not bear within it any illicitness, and as to its origin, natural to the individual and rooted in what animates him as a human being, and as to its aim, loving another person, which is a good aim’. And Oliva concludes in calling for ‘the welcoming of homosexual people at the heart of the Church and not on its margins’.
After reading Amours, cardinals, bishops and many priests have told me that their vision of Saint Thomas Aquinas has changed, and that the prohibition on homosexuality has definitely been lifted. Some, both among the faithful and among the church hierarchies, even told me that the book has had the same effect on them as André Gide’s Corydon, and Adriano Oliva finishes his book with an allusion to Gide’s novel If It Die.... (When I asked him, Brother Oliva refused to comment on the genesis of his book or to discuss his connections with Rome. His publisher, Jean-François Colosimo, director of Éditions du Cerf, was more forthcoming, like the team of Cardinal Baldisseri, who confirmed that they had sent ‘analysis requests to experts’ including Brother Oliva. In the end I received confirmation that Adriano Oliva had been welcomed at the Vatican by Baldisseri, Bruno Forte and Fabio Fabene – the chief architects of the Synod.)
As might have been expected, the book did not go unnoticed in Thomist circles, where it had the effect of a cluster bomb. The argument enflamed the most orthodox Catholic circles, all the more so since the attack came from within, signed by a priest who could not easily be rebutted, a Thomist among Thomists. Five Dominicans from the Angelicum, the pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, soon dashed off a scathing riposte, even though several of them are themselves homophiles. Identitarian militants joined in, violently attacking the priest for having the audacity to turn Thomas Aquinas into a ‘gay-friendly’ author! On sites and blogs, the Catholic far right blustered.
Supported by the Master of the order of Dominicans, on whom he depended, Brother Oliva also came under fresh attacks, academic this time, in several Thomist journals, including a 47-page article. In reply, a new 48-page article signed by the Dominican Camille de Belloy (whom I also interviewed) took up the defence of Oliva in the Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques. More salvoes have followed since then …
As we can see, the subject is a sensitive one. For Brother Oliva, who says he acted freely, it was probably the most dangerous subject of his career. And as courageous as the Dominican might have been, it was impossible for a scholar of his calibre to embark on such a study of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the gay question without getting a green light from on high. Cardinals Baldisseri and Kasper? Without question. And perhaps Pope Francis himself?
Cardinal Walter Kasper confirmed Francis’s personal intervention. ‘Adriano Oliva came to see me here. We talked. He had sent me a letter that I showed to the pope: Francis was impressed. And he asked Baldisseri to order him a text to send to the bishops. I think that was the text that became Amours.’ Kasper added: ‘Adriano Oliva served the Church, without being militant.’
Amours would be distributed during the synod, on the pope’s suggestion. The book was not just one more pamphlet or an isolated and slightly suicidal essay, as has been claimed: it was a weapon in an overall plan favoured by the pontiff himself.
The pope’s strategy, his manoeuvre, his war machine set in motion against the conservatives in the Church, did not escape his opponents. When I questioned these anti-Francis clerics, whether they were cardinals or simple monsignori, they preferred to react off the record. By tradition, a cardinal never speaks ill of the pope outside the Vatican. The Jesuits and members of Opus Dei keep their disagreements even more quiet. Dominicans are prudent and generally progressive, like Franciscans. But ad hominem criticisms of Francis are quick to come once the mike is switched off. There is even a real outpouring of hatred.
One of those viper-tongued prelates is a key prelate in the Curia, with whom I had over a dozen meetings, lunches and dinners. Witty and malicious – viperine, in short – Aguisel (I have changed his name) is an uninhibited homosexual who, in spite of his considerable age, remains a great charmer. Aguisel is a Gay Pride march all by himself! He makes passes at the seminarians he invites to dinner in batches; he flirts with waiters in cafés or Roman restaurants where we’re having dinner, calling them by their first names. And it turns out that Aguisel likes me.
‘I’m from the Old Testament,’ our prelate tells me in a funny, self-ironic and very true turn of phrase.
Aguisel hates Francis. He reproaches him for his ‘communizing’ tendency, his liberalism with regard to the family, and for his perspectives, which are too favourable to homosexuals.
‘The pope is a zealot,’ he tells me, and on his lips it’s not a term of praise.
Another day, when we are having dinner at the Campana, a typical Roman restaurant on Vicolo della Campana (a building where Caravaggio is supposed to have pursued his habits), Mgr Aguisel lists Francis’s incoherencies, his changes of direction. This pope is ‘inconsistent’ in his view. On homosexuality he takes one step forward, then two steps back, proof that he’s playing it by ear. ‘How can Francis attack gender theory and, at the same time, officially receive a Spanish transsexual in the Vatican with his or her fiancé or fiancée … you see, we don’t even know how to say it! It’s all incoherent, and shows that there is no doctrine, only impulsive acts of communication.’
The prelate whispers in a confidential tone: ‘But you know, the pope has made lots of enemies in the Curia. He’s wicked. He’s firing everyone. He can’t bear to be contradicted. Look at what he did to Cardinal Müller!’
I suggest that there are other reasons for Francis’s animosity to Müller (whom the pope dismissed without warning in 2017). My interlocutor is aware of the matters I raise, and realizes I am well informed. But he is wholly obsessed by the small vexations endured by Müller and his allies.
‘The pope intervened from on high, and personally, to fire Müller’s assistants within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. From one day to the next they were sent back to their countries! Apparently they were speaking ill of the pope. Criminals? It’s not true. They were just the opposition. It’s not good, when you’re pope, to take it out personally on humble monsignori!’
After a pause, Aguisel goes on: ‘Francis has a spy in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who reports everything to him. You know that? He has a spy! The spy is the under-secretary!’
Over lots of meals, that’s more or less the kind of conversation I had with the prelate. He knows the secrets of the Curia, and of course the names of ‘practising’ bishops and cardinals. He enjoys giving them to me, telling me everything, even though every time he ‘outs’ a co-religionist he catches himself, surprised by his own daring.
‘Oh, I’m talking too much. I’m talking too much. I shouldn’t. You must think me terribly cheeky!’
I was fascinated by the prelate’s calculated imprudence during our regular dialogues, which spread out over dozens of hours and several years. Like all the prelates I meet, he knows very well that I’m a well-known reporter and the author of several books on the gay question. If he talks to me, like so many anti-Francis cardinals and bishops, it isn’t by chance or by accident, but because of this ‘illness of rumour, gossip and scandal-mongering’ that the pope has mocked so effectively.
‘The holy father is a bit special,’ Mgr Aguisel adds. ‘The people, the crowds, everyone loves him all over the world, but they don’t know who he is. He is brutal! He is cruel! He is crude! Here we know him, and he is loathed.’
One day when we were having lunch somewhere near the Piazza Navona in Rome, his Excellency Aguisel takes me by the arm without warning at the end of the meal and leads me towards the church of San Luigi dei Francesi.
‘Here,
you have three Caravaggios, and it’s free. You mustn’t miss them.’
The paintings – oil on canvas – are sumptuous, with their crepuscular depth and their brutal darkness. I put a euro coin in a little machine at the front of the chapel; suddenly the works are illuminated.
After greeting a ‘sacristy queen’ who has recognized him – as everywhere, there are large numbers of gays among the seminarians and priests of this French church – Aguisel now has a honeyed chat with a group of young tourists, stressing his prestigious curial title. After this intermezzo, we resume our dialogue about Caravaggio’s homosexuality. The eroticism emanated by the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, an old man on the ground being killed by a handsome naked warrior, echoes his Saint Matthew and the Angel, location now unknown, which was judged too homoerotic to be worthy of a chapel! For the Lute Player, the Boy with the Basket of Fruit and his Bacchus, Caravaggio used his lover Mario Minniti as model. Paintings like Narcissus, Concert, Saint John the Baptist and the strange Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Victorious, which I saw at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin) have long confirmed the painter’s attraction to boys. The writer Dominique Fernandez, a member of the Académie française, wrote: ‘For me, Caravaggio is the greatest homosexual painter of all time; I mean that he has vehemently exalted the bond of desire between two men.’
Isn’t it strange, then, that Caravaggio should be the favourite painter of Pope Francis, of the rigid closeted cardinals of the Curia and of the gay militants who organize LGBT City Tours in Rome, one of the stops of which consists precisely in coming to honour ‘their’ painter?
‘Here in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, we welcome whole busloads of visitors. There are fewer and fewer parishioners and more low-cost tourists! They only come to see Caravaggio. They behave with a vulgarity that they would never display in a museum! I have to chase them away!’ explains Mgr François Bousquet, the rector of the French church, with whom I have lunch twice.
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 14
