Former Member of the Swiss Guard ...
By Tom Gardner
A former Swiss Guard has claimed he was regularly asked for sex by a 'gay lobby' of high-ranking clergy in the Vatican. Cardinals, bishops, priests and other officials in the Vatican had regularly attempted to engage the unnamed man, who was responsible for the Pope's security, in illicit rendezvous, according to new claims. The former guard said he received up to 20 'unambiguous requests' from members of the clergy and was asked for sex by a dignitary close to Pope John Paul II, a Swiss weekly newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag reported. In the latest sex scandal to engulf the Catholic church, the security guard said a senior official fondled him. He also claimed a bishop left a bottle of whisky on his bed with a visiting card placed next to it. During another incident a priest had invited him to dinner saying that the guard would be served after for dessert. He also claimed that he reported the harassment to officials in the Vatican who offered him no support and attacked the Church's 'hypocrisy' of opposing sex outside of marriage and supporting the excommunication of divorcees. The former guard said his experiences, several years ago, added weight to allegations of a 'gay lobby' being active in the Vatican. Urs Breitenmoser, a spokesman for the Swiss Guard, which numbers 110 men, told Schweiz am Sonntag that 'the rumour of a homosexual network in the heart of the Vatican was not a problem'. Breitenmoser said the preoccupations of the guards were 'above all religious and military'. In November, current Pope Francis said at a news conference that he wouldn’t judge priests for their sexual orientation. 'If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?' the pope said. 'We shouldn’t marginalize people for this,' he added. 'They must be integrated into society.' Francis said that gay priests should be forgiven and their sins forgotten in a shift from his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI who ruled that gays should not be priests. The Swiss Guard was shaken earlier by a gay controversy at the Vatican in 1998 when its commander Alois Estermann and his wife were shot dead by young guard Cédric Tornay, who later turned the gun on himself. According to a book about the Vatican by British journalist John Follain, Tornay and Estermann had a homosexual affair. Estermann subsequently had a relationship with another guard and refused to award a three-year service medal to Tornay, which led the guard to kill him, Follain maintains. Last July, an Italian weekly reported that Battista Ricca, appointed by Pope Francis to a top position at the Vatican bank, had had sexual relations with a Swiss army officer, amongst others. A Vatican spokesman dismissed the report as 'not credible'. PAEDOPHILE PRIEST CLAIMS RENT BOY RING OPERATED AT THE VATICAN The Catholic church has faced a string of lurid claims over the past decades. Last year, a convicted paedophile priest has claimed a rent boy ring operated at the Vatican, pictured below, with clergymen hiring teenagers for sex inside churches. Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, who served a five-year sentence for abusing five boys aged 14 to 15, at his parish outside Rome, has given police a list of nine names. A senior Vatican official has dismissed the allegations, accusing Poggi of seeking revenge because the church refused to reinstate him. Poggi, the former priest at the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, said he made the allegations to 'protect the Holy Church and the Christian community.' The boys were chosen because they were starving and desperate, he claimed, according to Il Messaggero newspaper. Poggi's list of names included two senior church officials and a religion lecturer. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, head of the Catholic Vicariate of Rome, accused Poggi of making false claims out of a desire for vengeance and personal resentment. Vallini said: 'The cardinal expresses his full confidence in the magistracy and declares himself full convinced that this slander will be demolished, demonstrating Poggi's claims to be untrue 'God will hold everyone accountable for their deeds.' The controversy comes just weeks after Pope Francis confirmed the existence of a 'gay lobby' in the Vatican to a visiting Latin American church group. The apparent network inside the supposedly celibate and staunchly anti-homosexual Church is one reason why Pope Francis is working on a thorough house-cleaning of the Roman curia.
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