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 Homosexuality, Greed, Favoritism Holy See Furious—Attempts Ban on Priest-Insider's Book Monsignor's Memoir Uncovers Rampant Sexual Hypocrisy |
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By Jack Nichols
Milan, Italy—On the heels of the Vatican's recently highly publicized attack on homosexuality
as an "intrinsic evil" as well as its refusal to countenance a Roman Catholic ministry to gay men and
lesbians, the Holy See appears now to be getting an unrelated comeuppance.
The Church's highest ecclesiastical tribunal is currently attempting to try a 72-year-old priest, Monsignor Luigi Marinelli, author of Gone with the Wind in the Vatican. The new book, an expose, is being marketed by a Milan publisher, Kaos. It is full of scandal, an insider's report on secretive and hypocritical behavior at the world's spiritual center of the Roman Catholic Church. Church authorities, outraged by the book, are calling for it to be banned. Such calls have backfired. The Italian press, unsympathetic to censorship, is turning the monsignor's tome into a runaway best seller. Over the weekend, news reports from Sydney to New York gave front page notice to the controversy surrounding it.
A statement on the front cover of his book reads: "It's time the Church asked forgiveness to Christ for the many infidelities and betrayals of its ministers, especially by those in authority at the top of the Vatican hierarchy." One juicy revelation tells how a Vatican bishop gets surprised at night by Rome police while cavorting with another man, near-naked in an automobile. Another Vatican bishop apparently steals diocesan funds to pay for his illegitimate child while a third gets caught, reportedly, absconding with a suitcase stuffed with cash. The Vatican's dog-eat-dog love of money, says the Monsignor, would shame even Wall Street's moguls. Pope John Paul II gets sent on world missions by his manipulative underlings while they misuse his powers in his absence. Nepotism, says the book, is as common today in Roman Catholicism's center city, as when it was recorded centuries ago. Msr. Marinelli refused to attend a closed church hearing about his book. He has not violated canon law, he insists, and he believes he's been made a scapegoat by Vatican authorities. He's asking for the right to talk to his superiors before being tried. Denying that it is trying to censor the priest's book, a Vatican statement claims that the purpose of the monsignor's trial will be to "protect those defamed, not to prevent freedom of expression". Monsignor Marinelli fears being stripped of priestly duties, including his right to say mass. |
