“Sex and the Vatican,” a new book published Wednesday claims that thousands of Catholic priests are living their lives in secret, “illicit relationships” —  homosexual and heterosexual — according to its author, an investigative journalist who lived undercover for months to document what he calls a “hidden world.” The Roman Catholic Church does not allow its priests to have any sexual relationship — gay or straight — nor to be married, as they have taken a vow of celibacy.
READ: “Pope’s Latest Assault: Gay Marriages Are “Penalizing†Straight Marriages“
The book, published for now only in Italy, was authored by Carmelo Abbate. The story has “caught the attention of media around the world – from Newsweek to the Washington Post, from CBS to theGuardian, the BBC, France 2, from El Mundo inPravda, to Iranian television – this secret journey into the Kingdom of Castile. A factual investigation by an undercover reporter who has had enormous economic and caused the reaction of the Vatican, in an official note of the Vicariate of Rome, invited the priests involved to ‘come out’,” reads a translation of its publisher’s website.
“Some priests pay ex-lovers hush money so as not to be found out while others covertly support their illegitimate children through school, the book alleges,” writes Nick Squires of the book in Canada’s The Daily Telegraph, adding, “heterosexual priests have children with women who can never be their wives, and gay priests of many different nationalities visit nightclubs in Rome and pay for sex with escorts.”
“There is a culture of ‘omerta’ (silence) in which the Church pretends not to know about any of this. If the authorities do find out, they just cover it up so as to avoid any scandal,” author Carmelo Abbate told The Daily Telegraph, which adds,
He cited research which suggests that as many as a third of Catholic priests in the United States are gay and a quarter are in heterosexual relationships with women. Similar statistics have been reported in Germany and Austria.
Women made pregnant by priests told him of being forced to have abortions, or having to put their children up for adoption in a desperate attempt to keep their relationships secret.
Some priests pay ex-lovers hush money so as not to be found out while others covertly support their illegitimate children through school, the book claims.
Last year, Abbate — who says he is Catholic himself — wrote the beginnings of this book as a story for the Italian Magazine Panorama, and gave an interview about the story in which he suggested the Pope “better change jobs.”
In that Panorama exposé, Abbate wrote that one Italian priest claimed that 98% of all Vatican priests are gay.
“Gay priests are apparently not a rarity in Rome,” wrote BeyondChron, a U.S. magazine that reviewed Abbate’s Panorama story. “Father Carlo (another fake name) told the magazine that 98% of the priests in the “Holy City†are queer. He sat with the reporter at a restaurant frequented by gays and pointed out a male couple in which one was a priest. Afterwards, he led the tour guide to his apartment and they had “un rapporto sessuale†(a sexual encounter).”
“But as gay activist Franco Grillini, a former MP, observed: “If all the gays in the Catholic church were to leave it at once–something we would very much like — they would cause it serious operational problems.†Especially in Rome.”
A video, marked by YouTube with the warning, “This content May Contain material flagged by YouTube’s user community That May Be Inappropriate For Some users,” purportedly from Panorama, claims to document some of the allegations Abbate made last year. Via a Google translation:
“[W]ith a hidden camera investigation, followed by detailed inspections and thorough inspection. For twenty days Carmelo Abbate, a journalist for Panorama, flanked by an “accomplice” gay, has infiltrated in the evenings some good priests, in Rome, leading an amazing double life: by day they are priests in cassocks, at night, stopped his habit, men are perfectly integrated into the gay circles of the capital. What came out is that the field investigation has uncovered a really unusual and somewhat shocking priests attending night parties with escort men who have sex with casual partners, who attend gay chat and nightspots.”
Warning: This video may be inappropriate for some users: