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	Creep of the Week: Monsignor Tommaso Stenico By D'Anne Witkowski PrideSource October 18, 2007 http://www.pridesource.com/article.shtml?article=27381 "There's a man who leads a life of danger. To everyone he meets he stays a stranger..." Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, a high-ranking Vatican official, is under fire after being caught on tape putting the moves on a young man and insisting that gay sex wasn't sinful. But he can explain. He was just pretending to be gay. You know, to help the church get rid of people who actually are. "With every move he makes, another chance he takes..." This pretending, Stenico told La Repubblica, was done "to better understand this mysterious and faraway world which, by the fault of a few people — among them some priests — is doing so much harm to the church." "Secret Agent Man..." And so, like anybody just wanting to help, he braved this "mysterious and faraway world" by frequenting gay chat rooms, meeting with guys and telling them he was gay. And, according to the footage secretly taped for a TV show about gay priests, he hit on them and encouraged them to have sex. Gay sex. With him. "I only pretended I was gay to study how priests are seduced," Stenico told The Times Online. "There are people who go after them ... I really believe there is a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists." "Beware of pretty faces that you find. A pretty face may hide an evil mind..." His excuse isn't flying with the church. According to the Associated Press, "While Stenico's face was blurred in the footage, church officials recognized his Vatican office in the background and suspendeda him pending a church investigation." Yes, you heard right. Stenico was outted by his office decor. Yet, he insists he isn't gay. "It's all false; it was a trap," he told La Repubblica. "I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the church with my psychoanalyst work." Looks like Larry Craig isn't the only one asking, "Who do you have to blow to prove you're not gay around here?" "Oh, be careful what you say or you give yourself away..." But Stenico was just trying to "clean up the church." Is that so wrong? Well, no, if by "cleaning up" you mean getting rid of cobwebs and shampooing carpets. But if by "cleaning up" you mean hunting for gay Catholics to boot out, then that's a problem. Whether Stenico was an undercover agent rooting out the queers or a Catholic bigwig using his power to get his closeted rocks off, Dude is in the wrong. "Oh, don't let the wrong word slip while kissin' persuasive lips..." Two years ago the Vatican put the smack down on gays in their ranks saying they wouldn't admit gay men into the priesthood, specifically those who "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies." Shallowly rooted homosexual tendencies were okay, though. Men whose homosexuality was a simple "transitory problem" were given the green light so long as they'd stayed "straight" for three years. So this whole Stenico thing must be a little embarrassing for them. Or it would be if the Vatican had humility.
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