IRELAND
Irish Independent
Kim Bielenberg
PUBLISHED
07/08/2016
The catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly states that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.
The Vatican warns that under no circumstances can a gay lifestyle be approved, but that has not stopped rumours and scandals reaching to the very heart of the institution.
This has not just happened over years and decades, but over centuries, leading to inevitable accusations of hypocrisy.
According to several accounts, which are hard to verify 1,000 years later, Pope John XII from the 10th Century had sex with men and boys and was accused of transforming his palace “into a whorehouse”.
The 14th Century Pontiff Boniface VIII, who reigned from 1294 to 1303, was said to have declared to a prospective male lover that two men having sex was “no more a sin than rubbing your hands together”.
Historical rumour records that Paul II passed away while having sex with a page boy, and that he was succeeded by Sixtus IV, who appointed his lover, Petro Riario, who happened to be his nephew, a cardinal at the age of 17.
While recent popes have been free of gay scandal on a personal level, the rumours and stories of liaisons among the clergy continue to be a feature of Vatican life and are regularly reported in the Italian press.
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