Life in Canada

Pope Francis.. a wise man?

During his well-publicized Brazilian visit what particularly caught the headlines was a notably non-judgmental remark about homosexuality.

He also said gays should be “integrated” not marginalised. Though the generous tone (as with his remarks about women’s service to the church) was new, he stressed that church teaching is unaltered. Yet this is more subtle than outsiders sometimes appreciate. The catechism deplores homosexual acts, terming them “objectively disordered”, but it also forthrightly condemns all signs of discrimination against homosexuals, saying they “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity”.

The intriguing aspect of his remark, however, was the question that prompted it: about Monsignor Battista Ricca, appointed by Pope Francis in June to perhaps the most sensitive job in the Vatican, the Prelate of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), popularly known as the Vatican bank. He will be the pope’s eyes and ears in an outfit that has besmirched the image of the papacy, and which Poope Francis seems set on overhauling. He has since named one commission to scrutinise the IOR and another to look at the overall management of the Vatican’s finances.

Now many wonder if Pope Francis was set up—perhaps deliberately misinformed about his choice. Shortly before he left Rome L’Espresso, a newsweekly, reported that Monsignor Ricca’s time as a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay had been beset by scandal. It said he had arrived with a gay lover whom he had housed and employed; that he had been beaten up in a gay bar, and caught in the middle of the night with a young male prostitute. Though strongly denied, the claims would, if true, deal a blow to Pope Francis’s plans for reform of the curial administration.

In February La Repubblica, (a daily sister publication) reported that Vatican investigators had identified a network of gay prelates, some of whom were being blackmailed. Details of this “gay lobby” are supposedly in a dossier on the “Vatileaks” affair, prepared by three cardinals on Benedict’s orders. Vatileaks involved the leaking by the papal butler of secret correspondence purportedly revealing scandalous maladministration.

All this adds significance to Pope Francis’s remarks: “We must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby.” Lobbies were bad, he said. “But if a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge that person?”

One worldly interpretation of the Pope's remarks on the plane is that he is trying to diminish the impact of any further revelations in the Vatileaks affair.

A more dramatic version is that, as he seems to have already hinted, he is preparing to strike against a homosexual network in the Vatican and wants his motives to be clear: that it is not the sexual orientation, or even behaviour, of its members that he condemns, but the formation of interest groups in an organisation that is meant to have only one interest, and one earthly boss. of its members that he condemns, but the formation of interest groups in an organisation that is meant to have only one interest, and one earthly boss.