Suddenly, Mgr Aguisel has something else to show me. He takes a little detour, lights the beautiful chapel, and here it is: Saint Sebastian! This painting by Numa Boucoiran was added to the church in the nineteenth century, at the request of the French ambassador to the Vatican (‘at least five have been homosexual since the war,’ adds Aguisel, who has counted them carefully). Conventionally painted, without any great artistic genius, this Saint Sebastian still brings together all the codes of gay iconography: the boy is standing up, flamboyant, proud and rapturous, with a nudity exaggerated by the beauty of his muscles, his athletic body pierced by the arrow of his executioner, who may be his lover. Boucoiran is loyal to the myth, even if he doesn’t have the talent of Botticelli, Le Sodoma, Titian, Veronese, Guido Reni, El Greco or Rubens, all of whom have painted this gay icon, or indeed Leonardo da Vinci, who drew it eight times.
I have seen several Saint Sebastians in the Vatican museums, in particular the one by Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta, which is so enticing and libidinous that it could be used on the cover of an encyclopaedia of LGBT cultures. And that’s not counting the Saint Sebastian in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which has a chapel dedicated to it, on the right of the entrance, just after Michelangelo’s Pietà. It is also where John Paul II’s body is laid.
The Saint Sebastian myth is a veiled code, highly prized, whether consciously or not, by the men of the holy see. To strip that code away is to reveal many things in spite of the multiple readings it offers. Sebastian can be turned into an ephebophilic figure, or a sadomasochistic one; he can represent the submissive passivity of a youth or, conversely, the martial vigour of a soldier resisting whatever it takes. And especially this: Sebastian, tied to the tree, in his absolute vulnerability, seems to love his executioner, to wrap his arms around him. This ‘ecstasy of pain’, the executioner and his victim mixed together, caught in a single breath, is a marvellous metaphor for homosexuality in the Vatican. In The Closet, Sebastian is celebrated every day.
One of the few opponents of Francis who agrees to speak publicly is the Australian cardinal George Pell, the pope’s ‘minister’ of the economy. When Pell approaches me to greet me, I’m sitting in a little waiting room in Loggia I of the apostolic palace of the Vatican. He is standing, I am seated: suddenly I have a giant in front of me. He is gangling, his gait slightly unbalanced. Flanked by his assistant – who is equally enormous, who walks nonchalantly, and who will take conscientious note of our exchanges – I have never felt so small in my life. Together, they’re at least four metres tall!
‘I work with the pope and meet him every two weeks,’ Pell tells me with great courtesy. ‘We probably have different cultural backgrounds: he comes from Argentina, I’m from Australia. I may have divergences of opinion with him, as on climate change for example. But we are a religious organization, not a political party. We must be united where faith and morality are concerned. Apart from that I would say that we are free, and as Mao Zedong said, let a hundred flowers blossom …’
George Pell answers my questions in the Anglo-Saxon style, with professionalism, concision and humour. He is efficient; he knows his files and his music. Everything here is on the record. I am struck by the cardinal’s politeness, given that his colleagues have told me he is ‘brutal’ and ‘confrontational’, if not as frightening as a ‘bulldog’. His nickname at the Vatican: ‘Pell Pot’.
We talk about the finances of the holy see; about his work as a minister; about the transparency that he is busy implementing where opacity prevailed for so long.
‘When I arrived, I discovered almost 1.4 billion euros sleeping, forgotten by all the balance sheets! Financial reform is one of the few subjects that unite the right, the left and the centre in the Vatican, both politically and sociologically.’
‘There is a right and a left in the Vatican?’ I cut in.
‘I think everyone here is a variation of the radical centre.’
At the Synod, George Pell, who is generally considered to be one of the representatives of the conservative right wing of the Vatican, a ‘Ratzingerian’, has been one of the cardinals who are critical of Francis. As I expected, the cardinal puts into perspective his disagreements, which have leaked into the press, demonstrating a certain casuistry, if not double-speak: ‘I’m not an opponent of Francis. I’m a loyal servant of the pope. Francis encourages free and open discussions, and he likes to hear the truth of people who don’t think like that.’
Several times, George Pell talks about the ‘moral authority’ of the Church, which he sees as its raison d’être and its main engine of influence all around the world. He thinks it must remain faithful to doctrine and tradition: you can’t change the law, even if society is transformed. All of a sudden, Francis’s line on the ‘peripheries’ and his empathy for homosexuals strike him as vain, if not erroneous.
‘It’s fine to take an interest in “peripheries”. But still you need a critical mass of believers. Without a doubt you need to take care of the lost sheep, but you must also take an interest in the 99 other sheep who have stayed with the herd.’ (Since our interview, Pell has left Rome after being questioned by the Australian courts in connection with cases of historic sexual abuse against boys, charges that he fervently denies. His highly publicized trial, with thousands of pages of transcripts, is currently under way.)
The result of nearly two years of debates and tensions around the synod has a lovely name: Amoris laetitia (the joy of love). This post-synodal apostolic exhortation bears the personal mark and cultural references of Francis. The pope insists on the fact that no family is a perfect reality; pastoral attention must be devoted to all families, as they are. We are a long way from talk of the ideal family as delivered by those conservatives who are opposed to gay marriage.
Some prelates think, with some justification, that Francis has gone back on his reforming ambitions, choosing a kind of status quo on the most sensitive questions. Francis’s defenders, on the other hand, see Amoris laetitia as a major turning point.
According to one of the authors of the text, the homosexuals have lost the battle of the Synod, but on the other hand they still managed to include, by way of reprisal, three coded references to homosexuality in this apostolic exhortation: a hidden formula on ‘loving friendship’ (§127); a reference to the joy of the birth of Saint John the Baptist, whom we know to have been painted as effeminate by both Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci, who modelled him on his lover Salaï (§65); and finally, the name of a Catholic thinker who eventually acknowledged his homosexuality, Gabriel Marcel (§322) … A slender victory!
‘Amoris laetitia is the result of the two synods,’ Cardinal Baldisseri tells me. ‘If you read chapters 4 and 5, you will see that it is a magnificent text about loving relationships and love. Chapter 8, the chapter about sensitive subjects, is, it is true, a compromise.’
The conservative wing of the Vatican did not like that compromise. Five cardinals, including two of the pope’s ‘ministers’, Gerhard Ludwig Müller and Raymond Burke, had already set out their disagreements, even before the Synod, in a book called Remaining in the Truth of Christ – a public disavowal as rare as it was noisy. Cardinal George Pell, another of Francis’s ministers, and Angelo Scola, did similarly, effectively joining the opposition. Without allying himself formally with them, Georg Gänswein, Pope Benedict XVI’s famous private secretary, delivered a sibylline public message confirming this line.
The same group picked up its pen, once the discussions of the second Synod were completed, to make their disagreement public. Calling for ‘clarity’ about the ‘doubts’ of Amoris laetitia, the letter is signed by four cardinals: the American Raymond Burke, the Italian Carlo Caffarra and two Germans, Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner (soon nicknamed the four ‘dubia’, doubts in Latin). Their letter was made public in September 2016. The pope didn’t even take the trouble to answer them.
Let us linger for a moment on those four ‘dubia’. Two of these four have recently died. Acco
rding to many sources in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the United States, they were closeted and had multiple ‘worldly’ encounters and special friendships. The entourage of one of them was mocked in the German-speaking press for consisting entirely of handsome and effeminate young men; his ‘homophilia’ has now been attested by journalists beyond the Rhine. As for Carlo Caffarra – the former Archbishop of Bologna, made cardinal by Benedict XVI – who founded the John Paul II Institute ‘for studies on marriage and the family’, he was so vocal in his opposition to gay marriage that this obsession gives him away.
The ‘dubia’ have a style of their own: apparent humility and extravagant vanity; obsequious explosions of laughter from their handsome young companions and book burnings; sacristy hangers-on, liturgy queens, well-combed choirboys with their straight partings from the Jesuit schools and the Inquisition; a tortuous and, indeed, torturous language and medieval positions on sexual morality. And on top of that, what a lack of enthusiasm for the fair sex! Such misogyny! Such divine gaiety, such virile rigidity – or vice versa. ‘The Lady doth protest too much, methinks.’
Fully informed about the ‘homophilia’ of some of these ‘dubia’ and the paradoxes of his opponents’ lives – these paragons of moral intransigence and rigidity – the pope is deeply revolted by such a level of duplicity.
It is now that we see the third part of Francis’s battle against his opposition: the Luciferian. Methodically, the pope will punish his enemies, one cardinal after the other: either by taking away their ministries (Gerhard Müller would be dismissed as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mauro Piacenza was unceremoniously moved, Raymond Burke ejected from his post as head of the Supreme Tribunal); by emptying their function of all substance (Robert Sarah is back at the head of a ministry, a real empty shell, deprived of all support); by dismissing their entourages (Sarah and Müller’s colleagues have been ousted and replaced by supporters of Francis); or by letting the cardinals weaken themselves (the accusations of sexual abuse against George Pell, the mishandling of these matters by Gerhard Müller and Joachim Meisner, and the internal battle within the Order of Malta involving Raymond Burke). Who said Pope Francis was merciful?
The morning when I meet Cardinal Ludwig Gerhard Müller at his private residence in the Piazza della città Leonina, near the Vatican, I have a sense that I’ve woken him up. Was he singing matins all night? The all-powerful prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and enemy no. 1 of Pope Francis, opens the door himself … and he’s still in his nightclothes. My first cardinal in pyjamas!
In front of me I see a tall man in a crumpled tee-shirt, in loose, long and elastic leisure-wear trousers, Vittorio Rossi brand, and slippers. Slightly embarrassed, I stammer: ‘We did arrange to meet at 9.00?’
‘Yes, absolutely. But you didn’t plan to take any photographs, did you?’ asks the cardinal-prefect emeritus, who now seems to realize how incongruous his outfit is.
‘No, no – no photographs.’
‘So I can stay [dressed] like this,’ Müller says to me.
We sit down in his vast office, where an impressive library covers each wall. The conversation is heated, and Müller seems more complex than his opponents suggest.
An intellectual who was close to Benedict XVI, he is perfectly familiar, like the pope emeritus, with the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jacques Maritain, and we talk about them for a long time. Müller shows me their books in his impeccably organized library to prove to me that he has read them.
The apartment is classical, and ugly in a rather un-Catholic way. That’s a trait shared by dozens of cardinals’ apartments I have visited: this demi-mondain semi-luxury, this mixture of genres that don’t match, the ersatz, and the superficial rather than depth. It is, in a word, what I will call ‘middlebrow’! That’s the term they use in the United States for things that are neither elitist nor working-class: it’s the culture of the middle, the culture of between-the-two; the culture that is bang in the centre. A large, opulent, fake art-deco clock that has stopped working; an over-styled baroque chest of drawers; a fireman table all mixed up together. It’s the culture of moleskin notebooks, spuriously modelled on those of Bruce Chatwin and Hemingway, apocryphal legends. That style without style, ‘bland’ and dull, is common to Müller, Burke, Stafford, Farina, Etchegaray, Herranz, Martino, Ruini, Dziwisz, Re, Sandoval and many cardinals in search of ‘self-aggrandizement’ that I have visited.
Following his dismissal, Müller is greatly diminished when I meet him. The pope fired him without ceremony from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he had been ‘prefect’ since Benedict XVI.
‘What do I make of Pope Francis?’ Müller wonders. ‘Let’s say that Francis has his own way of doing things, his own style. [But] you will understand that the question of “pro” and “anti” Francis barely has any meaning for me. The red dress that we wear is the sign that we are ready to give our blood to Christ, and serving Christ means, for all cardinals, serving the Vicar of Christ. But the Church is not a community of robots, and the freedom of the children of God allows us to have different opinions, different ideas, other feelings than the pope. But I repeat, and I insist, that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to be deeply loyal to the pope. We are, because we want to be deeply loyal to the Lord.’
With Raymond Burke, Robert Sarah, Angelo Bagnasco and Mauro Piacenza, the loyal Müller joins the long list of Judases, making many sly and bitter attacks on the pope. With his quarrelsome nature, the rebellious cardinal wanted to teach the holy father a few lessons. Sanctimoniously, he violently contradicts his line on the Synod. He has given interviews on morality that contradict Francis, and that led to mounting tension and eventual rupture between them. To say that he has fallen into disgrace would be to imply that he was once in a state of grace. There had been a price on his red galero for several months. And Francis demoted him without hesitation during a discussion that, according to Müller, ‘lasted a minute’. And here he was, in front of me, in his underwear!
All of a sudden a nun, filled with devotion, who had just knocked gently at the door, comes in with the cardinal’s tea, which she has prepared with the clerical care befitting His Eminence, fallen though that Eminence might be. Ruffled by the nun’s entry, the cardinal barely watches her setting down the cup and, without a word of thanks, dismisses her brutally. The ancient sister, who came in quite diligently, leaves in a sulk. Even a maid in a well-to-do family would be treated better! I felt sorry for her and later, when the time came to leave, I wanted to go and see her to apologize for his rudeness.
Cardinal Müller is a man of many contradictions. In Bavaria, where he was bishop, he was remembered as an ‘ambiguous’ prelate, and perhaps even a ‘schizophrenic’ one, according to over a dozen testimonies that I collected in Munich and Regensburg. Priests and journalists described his worldly associations to me, in the ‘Regensburger Netzwerk’. He seemed to be under the influence of Joseph Ratzinger and Georg Gänswein.
‘When Müller was Bishop of Regensburg, here in Bavaria, his personality was not very well understood. His relationship with the famous German cardinal Karl Lehmann, a liberal and a progressive, seemed particularly complicated where the gay question was concerned: they exchanged very harsh, very bitter letters, and not what one might have expected. Lehmann was rather gay-friendly and heterosexual, whereas Müller was very anti-gay. At the same time Müller was a regular at the parties of Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis at St Emmeram Castle,’ I am told by a journalist from the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, Matthias Drobinski, who has been covering the German church for 25 years.
The castle in Regensburg combines, with a certain daring and a certain joy, a Romanesque and Gothic cloister, a Benedictine abbey, a baroque wing, and rococo and neo-rococo ballrooms. Playing with styles and eras, the palace is even known for belonging to the sister of Empress Sissi! It is home to Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, the widow of a wealthy industrialis
t whose family made its fortune by having the monopoly of the postal service during the days of the Holy Roman Empire, before this was expropriated by Napoleon. Her lair is the meeting place of the most conservative fringe of the German Catholic Church, which may be what won the princess her nickname of ‘Gloria TNT’, because of her explosive conservatism!
Freshly returned from her daily tennis lesson, the chatelaine, in a monogrammed pink polo shirt matching her sparkling oval glasses, her Rolex watch and big rings covered with crosses, grants me an audience. What a woman! What a circus!
We have a glass of wine in the ‘Café Antoinette’ – named after the decapitated queen of France – and Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, previously described to me as being rigid of character and butch of appearance, proves to be strangely gentle and friendly towards me. She expresses herself in perfect French.
Gloria ‘TNT’ takes her time to tell me of her life as a ‘queen’; the extent of her inheritance running into the billions, with the five hundred rooms of her castle to look after, not to mention 40,000 square metres of roofs: ‘it’s very, very expensive,’ she complains, widening her eyes. She goes on to speak of her reactionary right-wing political commitment; her affection for clerics, including her ‘dear friend’ Cardinal Müller; and her restless life between Germany, New York and Rome (where she lives in a pied-à-terre with another princess, Alessandra Borghese, prompting mad rumours about their royalist inclinations). Gloria TNT is particularly insistent on her muddled version of Catholicism: ‘I am of the Catholic faith. I have a personal private chapel in which my priest friends can celebrate mass when they want to. I love it when the chapels are used. I have had my own domestic priest, for over a year. He was retired, I brought him here. Now he lives with us in an apartment in the castle: he is my personal chaplain,’ Gloria ‘TNT’ explains.
The priest in question is called Mgr Wilhelm Imkamp. Even though he has the title ‘monsignore’, he isn’t a bishop.
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 15