In the Closet of the Vatican

by Frédéric Martel

  That’s why the context, while it might have the charm of theological and literary debates of another age, is so important to our subject. A sexless priest in the 1930s could easily become homophilic in the 1950s and actively practise homosexuality in the 1970s. Some cardinals currently working have passed through those stages, the internalization of desire, the struggle against themselves, homophilia, and then, soon, they stopped ‘sublimating’ or even ‘surmounting’ their homosexuality, and they began to experience it with prudence, soon with temerity and sometimes even in a state of intoxication. Of course, these same cardinals who have by now reached a canonical age barely ‘practise’ at 75 or 80, but they remain intrinsically marked, branded for ever, by that complex identity. Most importantly, they have always travelled a one-way journey, contrary to the theories that some have erected: it goes from denial to defiance, or to put it in the terms used by Proust in Sodom and Gomorrah, the rejection of the ‘cursed race’ in favour of the ‘chosen people’. And this is another rule of The Closet, the ninth: The homophiles of the Vatican generally move from chastity towards homosexuality; homosexuals never go into reverse gear and become homophilic.

  As the theologian-psychoanalyst Eugen Drewermann observed, there is ‘a kind of secret complicity between the Catholic Church and homosexuality’. I will often come across this dichotomy in the Vatican, and we might even say that it is one of its secrets: the violent rejection of homosexuality outside of the Church; its extravagant endorsement within the holy see. Hence a sort of ‘gay freemasonry’ that is very much present within the Vatican, but mysterious if not invisible outside it.

  In the course of my investigation, countless cardinals, archbishops, monsignori and other priests insisted on telling me of their almost religious devotion to the works of François Mauriac, André Gide or Julien Green. Prudently, and being sparing with their words, they gave me the keys to their heart-rending struggle: that of the ‘Maritain code’. I guess that it was their way, with infinite meekness and a certain introverted anxiety, of revealing one of the secrets that haunted them.

  8

  Loving friendship

  The first time I met Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès at the Vatican, I committed an unforgivable error. It’s true that the ranks and titles of the Roman Curia sometimes get muddled: they vary according to the dicasteries (ministries), the hierarchy, the orders and sometimes other criteria. Some people have to be addressed as ‘Eminence’ (a cardinal), others as ‘Excellency’ (an archbishop, a bishop), and still others as ‘Monsignor’ (the ones who are more than a priest but less than a bishop). Sometimes a prelate is plain father, sometimes brother, and sometimes a bishop. And how do we address the nuncios who have the title of archbishop? Not to mention the ‘monsignori’, an honorific title attributed to prelates but also to simple priests?

  So when I prepared for an interview with Cardinal Bertone, who was Benedict XVI’s ‘prime minister’, his personal assistant, taking the lead, explained to me by email that I would be well advised to address him, when I saw him, with the phrase ‘His Eminence Cardinal Bertone’.

  For me these titles have become a code and a game. For a Frenchman, the words have a whiff of monarchy and aristocracy – and when those got too big for their boots we chopped their heads off! In my conversations at the Vatican, out of mischief, I took pleasure in oafishly adding extra ones, in a spirit of mock deference. I also stuffed my many letters to the holy see full of them, adding by hand, in beautiful gothic script, these meaningless phrases to which I would add a monogram stamp, a number, a heraldic signature at the bottom of my missives – and it seemed to me that the replies to my requests were more positive the more I used pedantic titles and brown ink stamps. And yet nothing could be more alien to me than these vain formulas, which belong to the etiquette of another time. Had I dared, I would have perfumed my dispatches!

  Their replies were delicious epistles. All headed paper, fat signatures in blue ink and gushing endearments (‘Pregiatissimo Signore Martel’, Angelo Sodano wrote to me), almost always written in impeccable French, they contained obsequious formulations: ‘I wish you a fine ascent towards Easter,’ Mgr Battista Ricca wrote to me; ‘In the hope of greeting you in Urbe in the near future,’ said Mgr Fabrice Rivet; ‘Assuring you of my prayers,’ wrote Archbishop Rino Fisichella; ‘With the assurance of my prayers in Christ,’ declared Darío Castrillón Hoyos (who is now no longer with us); ‘Please accept my very best wishes in Christ,’ Cardinal Robert Sarah signed off. Cardinal Óscar Maradiaga, my friend after two letters, replied to me in Spanish: ‘Le deseo una devota Semana Santa y una feliz Pascua de Resurrección, su amigo [I wish you a devout Holy Week and a Happy Easter of Resurrection, my friend]’. Even more chummily, the Cardinal of Naples, Crescenzio Sepe, sent off a letter in which he addressed me with a friendly ‘Gentile Signore’, before concluding with a cool ‘cordiali saluti’. Mgr Fabián Pedacchio, Francis’s personal assistant, concluded his missive thus: ‘Warmly recommending the pope to your prayers, please accept the assurance of my devotion in the Lord.’ I have kept dozens of letters of this ilk.

  Happy these letter-writers of another age! Few cardinals use email in 2019; many still prefer to use the mail, and some the fax. Sometimes their assistants print out the emails they receive for them; they reply by hand on paper; scanned and mailed instantly to their addressee!

  Most of these cardinals still live in a power-play worthy of the Renaissance. Hearing myself saying ‘Your Eminence’ to a cardinal has always made me laugh internally; and I like the simplicity of Pope Francis, who wanted to get rid of those pretentious titles. Because isn’t it strange for a bunch of simple Curia employees to be called ‘monsignore’? For some poor closeted nuncios to cling to their title as ‘Excellencies’? For cardinals to take people more seriously if they call them ‘Your Eminence’? If I was in their place, I would prefer to be called ‘signore’. Or rather: Angelo, Tarcisio or Jean-Louis!

  As we have observed, in this book I have decided, as a good son of French laïcité, not always to follow the Vatican conventions. I have just written ‘holy see’ and not ‘Holy See’; and I always speak of the holy father, the holy virgin, the supreme pontiff – without capitals. I never say ‘His Holiness’, and I write ‘the holy of holies’. When I write ‘His Eminence’, the irony should be obvious. Neither do I use the title ‘Saint’ John Paul II, particularly after shedding light on the double games of his entourage! French laïcité, so little understood in Rome – and even, alas, by Francis – consists in respecting all religions, but not giving any one of them a particular status. On the other hand, I do write ‘the Poet’ – which in this book always refers to Rimbaud – with a capital! Luckily, in France we believe more in poetry than in religion.

  With Monsignor Bruguès I used the appropriate word, ‘Excellency’, but added, immediately afterwards, that I was happy to meet a French cardinal. A serious rookie error! Jean-Louis Bruguès let me speak without interruption and then, as he answered, he slipped in, between two minor observations, with an anodyne and falsely modest expression on his face, as if his title were of no importance, though he was clearly inwardly wounded: ‘Besides, I’m not a cardinal. It’s not automatic. I’m just an archbishop.’ He spoke with a lovely south-west French accent, which immediately made me warm to him.

  I had come to interview Bruguès, on that first occasion, for a radio programme, and I promised I would erase those words from the recording. After that, we saw each other often to chat or exchange ideas, and I never made the same mistake again. I’ve found out that for a long time he was on the short list to be ‘created’ cardinal, taking into account his closeness to Pope Benedict XVI, which was why he had coordinated the delicate passages about homosexuality in the New Catechism of the Catholic Church. But the pope had resigned. And his successor, Francis, never forgave Archbishop Bruguès, when Bruguès was secretary general of the Congregation for Catholic Education, for crossing swords with him over the appointment of his friend as re
ctor of Buenos Aires University. So he missed being appointed cardinal. (In 2018, when he had reached the end of his mandate and the pope didn’t reappoint him head of the library, Bruguès left Rome.)

  ‘The holy father never forgets anything. He’s rancorous; if one has upset him one day, or merely rubbed him up the wrong way, he remembers it for a long time. Bruguès won’t be created cardinal as long as Bergoglio is pope,’ a French archbishop gives me to understand.

  For a long time Jean-Louis Bruguès ran the famous Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the no less famous Secret Vatican Archives. In this library, they religiously preserve the Vatican ‘codices’, the old books, invaluable papyruses, incunabula, or a vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

  ‘We’re one of the oldest and wealthiest libraries in the world. In total we have 54 kilometres of printed books and 87 kilometres of archives,’ Bruguès tells me: he is plainly a stickler for accuracy.

  Cardinal Raffaele Farina, whom I interviewed several times at his home in the Vatican, and who was Bruguès’ predecessor in the secret archives, gives me to understand that the most sensitive files, on sexual abuses for example, are in fact kept at the Secretariat of State: the inoffensive secret archives are only secret in terms of their name. (In passing, Farina takes advantage of our meeting to level an accusation at the commission in charge of the fight against paedophilia in the holy see, which ‘is doing nothing’.)

  Father Urien, who worked for a long time in those archives, is even more categorical (his name has been altered): ‘All the reports on the financial scandals at the Vatican, all the cases of paedophilia, all the files on homosexuality, including everything we know about Paul VI, are kept at the Secretariat of State. If those documents had been made public, popes, cardinals and bishops might have been troubled by the law. The archives aren’t just the dark face of the Church. It’s the devil!’

  During our five conversations, Archbishop Bruguès is extremely cautious, although our dialogues focus essentially on literature – he is a passionate reader of Proust, François Mauriac, Jean Guitton, Henry de Montherlant, Tony Duvert, Christopher Isherwood; he’s travelled to Valparaíso in the footsteps of Pierre Loti; he knew Jacques Maritain at the Dominican monastery in Toulouse; and he had a long correspondence with Julien Green.

  ‘The recent archives aren’t open,’ Bruguès goes on. ‘They do it chronologically, by papacy, and only the holy father can decide to make a new period public. We are currently opening up the archives of Pius XII, those of the Second World War.’

  Paul VI will have to wait for a while.

  Is there a secret Paul VI? Rumours about the homosexuality of the man who was pope for 15 years – between 1962 and 1978 – are countless, and I’ve discussed them very freely with several cardinals. Someone who had access to the secret archives of the secretary of state even assures me that there are several files on the subject. But they aren’t public, and we don’t know what they contain.

  To grasp in all their complexity the mysteries surrounding this pope, we must therefore be counter-intuitive. For want of evidence, it’s important to go through the whole body of evidence all at once: Paul VI’s reading matter, the essence of the ‘Code Maritain’, are one; his friendships with Maritain, but also with Charles Journet and Jean Daniélou, are another; his spectacularly homophilic entourage at the Vatican, yet another. And then there is Jean Guitton. In the complex skein of particular inclinations, loving friendships and passions of this literate and Francophile pope, one single constant appears.

  The reader, by now, knows enough already. He may even be weary of these drip-fed confessions, these encrypted codes for saying things that are ultimately banal. And yet I have to come back to them again, because everything here has its own significance and these details, as in a great treasure hunt, will soon lead us, after Paul VI, to the heart of the troubling pontificate of John Paul II and the great Ratzingerian firework display. But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves …

  A right-wing French Catholic writer, Jean Guitton (1901–99) was born in and died with the twentieth century. A prolific author, he was a friend of Maritain, but also of the openly homosexual Jean Cocteau. His career during the Second World War remains to be written, but we may guess that he was a close collaborator and a lackey of Marshal Pétain. His theological work is minor, like his philosophical work, and his books have been almost completely forgotten today. The only survivor of this literary shipwreck consists of a few famous interviews with President François Mitterrand, and indeed with Pope Paul VI.

  ‘Jean Guitton has never been taken very seriously in France. He was a theologian for the Catholic middle class. His closeness to Paul VI remains something of a mystery,’ the editor-in-chief of Esprit, Jean-Louis Schlegel, observes during an interview at the journal’s offices.

  An Italian cardinal completes the picture, but I can’t tell whether he’s talking naively or whether he is trying to convey a message to me: ‘Jean Guitton’s work barely exists in Italy. He was a weakness of Paul VI, a very special friendship.’

  The same point of view comes from Cardinal Poupard, who was his friend for a long time.

  ‘Jean Guitton was an excellent writer, but not really a thinker.’ In spite of the superficiality of his work, the friendship that Guitton was able to form with Pope Paul VI is certainly based on a commonality of views, in particular about the subject of moral standards and sexual morality. Two historical texts reveal this connection. The first is the encyclical Humanae vitae, published in 1968: it concerns marriage and contraception, and has become famous under the unflattering name of the ‘encyclical on the pill’ because it definitively forbade its use, making it a rule that any sexual act must make the transmission of life possible.

  The second text is no less famous: this is the ‘declaration’ Persona humana of 29 December 1975. This crucial text expressly set about stigmatizing ‘the relaxation of morals’: it advocates strict chastity before marriage (at the time, the fashion was for ‘juvenile cohabitation’, and the Church wanted to put an end to it), severely condemned masturbation (‘an intrinsically and gravely disorderly act’), and proscribed homosexuality. ‘For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.’

  Major texts and yet texts that quickly became anachronistic. Even at the time they were badly received by the scientific community, since they ignored all of its biological, medical and psychoanalytical discoveries, and even more so by public opinion. The Catholic Church suddenly appeared violently opposed to the trends in society, and from then on its distance from the real life of the faithful would constantly grow. These archaic rules would never be understood by most Catholics: they would be massively ignored or mocked by new couples and young people, and haughtily rejected by the great majority of the faithful.

  There was even talk, where they were concerned, of a ‘silent schism’ that would lead to a drop in vocations and a collapse in Catholic practice.

  ‘The mistake was not to speak out about sexual morality,’ a cardinal I interviewed in Rome says regretfully. ‘It was desirable, and remains desired by the majority of Christians. The humanization of sexuality, to take up a phrase from Benedict XVI, is a theme about which the Church needed to say something. The error: setting the bar too high, if I can put it like that, and being disconnected and inaudible, the Church has put itself outside the debates on sexual morality. A hard-line position on abortion would also have been better understood had it been accompanied by a flexible position on contraception. By advocating chastity for young people, divorced couples or homosexuals, the Church stopped talking to its own people.’

  Today, we know from witness statements and archive documents that the prohibition on the pill, and perhaps the other moral condemnations of masturbation, homosexuality and the celibacy of the priesthood, were discussed at length. Ac
cording to historians, the hard line was held by a minority, but Paul VI took his decision alone, ex cathedra. He did so by rallying the conservative wing embodied by the old cardinal Ottaviani and a newcomer: Cardinal Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, who played a belated but decisive role in this spectacular hardening of the Church’s sexual morality. Jean Guitton, a militant advocate of heterosexual chastity, also argued for keeping celibacy among priests.

  Many theologians and experts that I have met reproach Pope Paul VI, whose ideas were so non-heterodox, for ‘taking a hard line’ for bad reasons, whether strategic or personal. They have pointed out to me that celibacy is a value that has been historically defended in the Church by its homophilic and homosexual components. According to one of these theologians: ‘Few heterosexual priests place value on heterosexual abstinence; it’s essentially an idea put forward by homosexuals, or at least people who have profoundly interrogated their own sexuality.’ Is Paul VI’s gentle secret revealed in broad daylight by the choice of the celibacy of the priesthood? A lot of people think so today.

  Such a priority, out of line with the times, teaches us about the Vatican’s state of mind. It also invites us to probe a quasi-sociological observation, established since at least the Middle Ages (if we believe the historian John Boswell), and which is a new rule of The Closet – the tenth: Homosexual priests and theologians are much more inclined to impose priestly celibacy than their heterosexual co-religionists. They are very concerned to have this vow of chastity respected, even though it is intrinsically against nature.

  The most fervent advocates of the vow of chastity are therefore, of course, the most suspicious. And it is here that the dialogue between Paul VI and Jean Guitton comes to the fore as a veritable contemporary drama.