Apart from the controversial Marcinkus, John Paul II’s entourage included other homophiles among the pontiff’s immediate circle of assistants and officers. The first of these was an Irish priest, Mgr John Magee, who was one of Paul VI’s private secretaries, and then briefly private secretary to John Paul I, remaining in the position under John Paul II. Having been appointed bishop of the diocese of Cloyne in County Cork, he found himself at the centre of a controversy concerning his failure to act in several cases of sexual abuse that shook the country. A young seminarian witness to the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation into the Cloyne Diocese (in connection with these sexual abuse cases) said that the bishop had embraced him tightly and kissed him on the forehead; these statements were made public in the Cloyne Report published by the Commission. Mgr Magee was finally forced to resign by Benedict XVI.
One of the pope’s other assistants who actively ‘practised’ his homosexuality was a priest who mixed the siphoning-off of funds with the seduction of young men (above consenting age to my knowledge). He also had an enthusiasm for Swiss Guards and seminarians, proclivities that he shared with one of the organizers of the pope’s foreign trips.
A young seminarian from Bologna experienced this and, in the course of several interviews, gave me a detailed account of his own misadventures. During the pope’s visit to that city in September 1997, two of the prelates in charge of the pontiff’s travels insisted on meeting the seminarians. They immediately spotted one young man in the group who was handsome and fair, and 24 years old at the time.
‘They inspected us in turn, and all of a sudden they pointed at me. They said: “You!” They asked me to come with them and wouldn’t let me go. They wanted to see me all the time. It was a very insistent form of advance,’ the former seminarian tells me (and he is still, when I meet him 20 years later, very charming).
During John Paul II’s visit, the pope’s close colleagues pushed this seminarian to the front, petting and fussing over him. They presented him to the pope in person and asked him to go up on stage with him three times.
‘I worked out that they were there on the hunt. They cruised the young men and made advances to me without hesitation. At the end of the trip they invited me to come and visit them in Rome and stay with them. They told me they could put me up at the Vatican and show me the pope’s office. I could see what they expected of me. I didn’t respond to their advances. I failed my vocation! Otherwise,’ he adds, ‘I might be a bishop today!’
The recklessness of these individuals had no limits. Two other loyal colleagues of the pope’s – an archbishop who advised him, as well as a very high-profile nuncio – also displayed their sexuality outrageously, to an unbelievable extent. The same was true of a Colombian cardinal whom we have not yet met, whose acquaintance we shall make shortly: this ‘satanic doctor’ was put in charge of the Vatican’s family policy by John Paul II, but in the evening he devoted himself with astonishing regularity to male prostitutes.
In the pope’s immediate entourage, there was also a trio of bishops who were quite remarkable in their way because they operated as a gang, and I must say a word on the subject here. They formed another lubricious circle around the pope. Compared with the majestic cardinals or prelates that I have mentioned, these homosexual adventurers working for his holiness were mediocre; but they did not play it safe.
The first is an archbishop who is always presented as an angel with the face of a saint, and whose beauty has caused tongues to wag. When I meet him today, almost thirty years later, he is still a handsome man. When he was close to Cardinal Sodano, he was also a favourite of the pontiff. His inclinations have been confirmed by many sources, and he is even said to have been removed from the Vatican diplomatic service ‘after being caught in bed with a black man,’ I am told by a priest in the Secretariat of State who slept with the man in question several times.
The second bishop close to John Paul II played an important role in the preparation of papal ceremonies. He also appears in photographs beside the holy father. Known for his sadomasochistic practices, he was said to have dressed all in leather when he frequented the Sphinx, a cruising club in Rome, now closed. An expression used about him became famous at the Vatican: ‘Lace by day; leather by night’.
As for the third bishop in the ‘gang’, he is described as having been particularly perverse; he was involved in numerous suspect financial dealings and affairs involving boys. The Italian press identified him a long time ago.
So these three bishops are part of what we might call the second ‘ring of lust’ around John Paul II. They weren’t in the first rank; they were second fiddles. Pope Francis, who has been aware of these villains for a long time, has kept them out of the way by refusing to make them cardinals. Today they are all closeted – doubly closeted, by their jobs.
These three initiates served as go-betweens and lackeys, butlers, chamberlains, masters of ceremonies, masters of celebrations, canons or heads of protocol for John Paul II. Amenable when required to be so, they sometimes offered ‘services’ to the most high-profile cardinals, and the rest of the time indulged in vice on their own account. (Among the entourage of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then ‘minister’ of the interior under Pope Francis, I would be given confirmation of the names of these bishops in the course of a series of recorded interviews.)
I had a lengthy meeting with two of these three musketeers, accompanied by Daniele, my main Italian researcher. The first was true to his image as a gentleman and prince. For fear of outing himself, he was on his guard even though there could be no mistaking his obvious homosexuality. The second, whom we met several times in a palace at the Vatican, in the ‘extraterritorial’ zone, left us actually flabbergasted. In this huge building that he shared with several cardinals, the priest welcomed us wide-eyed, as if we were Tadzio in Death in Venice! Ugly as sin, he made advances to Daniele without any preliminaries, and gave me all sorts of compliments (when he was seeing me for the first time). He gave us contacts; we promised to visit him again (which we did). And several doors did open, giving us entrées to the pope’s protocol service and the Vatican Bank, where this trio clearly had no shortage of contacts! Daniele was uncomfortable, particularly when I left him on his own for a few minutes to go to the bathroom. ‘I was afraid of being molested!’ he confided to me with a laugh when we left.
Among those close to John Paul II, the relationship with sexuality and cruising varies. While certain cardinals and bishops take risks, others double down on discretion. One French archbishop, later a cardinal, was, according to his former assistant, in a stable relationship, first with an Anglican priest and then with an Italian priest; another Italian cardinal lives with his companion, whom he introduced to me as ‘the husband of his late sister’, but everyone in the Vatican knew – starting with the Swiss Guards, who talked to me about it – the true nature of their relationship. A third, the American William Baum, whose habits have been made public, also lived in Rome with his lover, one of his assistants.
Another French-speaking cardinal whom I met several times, also close to John Paul II, is known for a slightly unusual vice: his technique consisted in inviting seminarians or trainee nuncios to lunch at his apartment, and then, claiming to be tired at the end of the meal, suggesting that they join him for a siesta. Then the cardinal would lie down on his bed without warning, and not say another word; he hoped that the young novice would join him. Drunk on reciprocity, he would wait patiently, motionless, like a spider in the middle of its web.
Another of John Paul II’s cardinals was known (according to the first-hand testimony of two priests who worked with him) for cruising outside the Vatican, particularly in the parks around the Campidoglio, and had refused, as I have already mentioned, to register his official car with Vatican diplomatic plates, to give him extra freedom.
Yet another cardinal, who occupied an important position as a ‘minister’ to John Paul II, was brutally returned to his country after a scandal with a
young Swiss Guard in which money played a part; he was later accused of having covered up cases of sexual abuse.
Other influential priests in John Paul II’s entourage were homophilic but more discreet. The Dominican Mario Luigi Ciappi, one of his personal theologians, fraternally shared his life with his ‘socius’ (assistant). One of the pope’s confessors (according to a former assistant of Ciappi) was also prudently homophilic.
But let’s return to the first ‘ring of lust’ in which cardinals La Mongolfiera and Platinette represent a kind of core around which the other stars gravitate. Compared with the great divas, the second rank and other peripheral cardinals are pallid indeed.
I have been told of their boy-chasing escapades by their assistants and collaborators, and by their fellow cardinals, and I was even able to interrogate Platinette, whose audacity I can confirm: he grabbed my shoulder and gave my forearm a manly grip, not letting go for a moment, but not going any further either, during an interview at the holy see.
So let us step inside this parallel world where vice is rewarded in proportion to its excess. Is it for this kind of practice that the English created that beautiful phrase: ‘They lived in squares and loved in triangles’? In any case, cardinals La Mongolfiera and Platinette, soon joined by a bishop whose pseudonym I shall forbear from quoting out of charity, are regular clients of the Roman male prostitutes, with whom they host foursomes.
Caught up in the whirlwinds of a dissolute life, were La Mongolfiera and Platinette taking considerable risks? We might imagine so. And yet, as cardinals, they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, and were also protected at the highest level of the Vatican as friends of the pope and his ministers. Besides, who would have talked? The Vatican had not yet been damaged by sexual scandals: the Italian press rarely covered these subjects; witnesses were silent; and the private lives of cardinals were untouchable. Social networks did not yet exist, and would only transform the media landscape later on, after the death of John Paul II: today, compromising videos and explicit photographs would probably be published on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. But at this time the camouflage was still fully in place.
To avoid rumours, La Mongolfiera and Platinette did take precautions: they instituted a sophisticated system of recruiting escorts via a triple filter. They themselves described their needs to a ‘gentleman of His Holiness’, a layman who was married and possibly heterosexual, and who, unlike his clients, had priorities other than homosexuality. He was immersed in a multitude of suspicious financial dealings, and in return for his services what he chiefly wanted was solid support at the top of the Curia and a visiting card.
In return for significant considerations, this ‘gentleman of His Holiness’, whose pseudonym was Negretto, a singer from Nigeria and a member of the Vatican choir, over the years constructed a fertile network of gay seminarians, Italian escorts and foreign male prostitutes. A real system of Russian dolls, each one fitting into the others, Negretto appealed to a third intermediary, whom he used as a tout and a go-between. They recruited in all directions, particularly from migrants who needed residence permits: if they proved to be ‘understanding’, this gentleman promised to intervene so that they would obtain their papers. (Here I am using information taken from the written records of phone-calls made by the Italian police and used in the trial to which this affair gave rise.)
The system would last for several years, under the pontificate of John Paul II and the early part of that of Benedict XVI, and supplied services not only for cardinals La Mongolfiera and Platinette and their friend the bishop, but for a fourth prelate (whose identity I have been unable to establish).
The action as such is supposed to have occurred outside the Vatican, in several residences, notably a villa with a pool, some luxury apartments in the centre of Rome and, according to two witnesses, the pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. This site, which I visited with an archbishop from the Vatican, is located, opportunely enough, in the extraterritorial zone, and is the property of the holy see and not of Italy, with the consequence that the Italian police are unable to intervene (as they confirmed to me). There, far from watchful eyes, under the pretext of exercising his dogs, a prelate can also put his favourites through their paces.
According to several sources, the critical point of this network of luxury escorts was the way in which it was financed. Not only did cardinals have recourse to male prostitution to satisfy their libido; not only were they homosexuals in private while advocating severe homophobia in public; they also took care not to pay their gigolos! In fact, they dug deep into the coffers of the Vatican to pay their intermediaries, who varied over time, as did the highly expensive, if not ruinous, escorts (up to 2,000 euros an evening for luxury escorts, according to the information gathered by the Italian police working on the case). Some Vatican monsignori, broadly informed about the affair, found an ironic nickname for these thrifty prelates: ‘the ATM priests’.
In the end, the Italian justice system inadvertently brought this prostitution network to an end, by having several of those behind the system arrested because of serious cases of corruption related to it. Two of the intermediaries were also arrested after being identified in telephone conversations. The prostitution network was consequently closed down by the police, who were aware of its extent, but they were unable to charge the main clients, who enjoyed Vatican immunity: Cardinals La Mongolfiera and Platinette.
In Rome, I interviewed a lieutenant colonel in the carabinieri. Here is his testimony.
‘Apparently these cardinals were identified, but couldn’t be called in for questioning, because of their diplomatic immunity. All cardinals enjoyed that immunity. As soon as they were implicated in a scandal, they were automatically protected. They sought shelter behind the ramparts of the holy see. Likewise, we couldn’t search their bags, even if we suspected them of drug-trafficking, for example, or take them in for questioning.’
The lieutenant colonel continues: ‘In theory, the Vatican police, which does not depend on the Italian authorities, could have questioned these cardinals and prosecuted them. But the holy see would have had to ask them to do it. Yet, obviously, in this case, the backers of this trade were themselves connected to the very highest echelons of the holy see …’
I won’t go into detail about the activities of these cardinals, even though, according to the police wire-taps, their requests were highly creative. They talk about the escorts in terms of ‘files’ and ‘situations’. The intermediaries obey, suggesting appropriate individuals that vary only in height and weight. Here are some extracts from the conversations (from the minutes of the trials):
‘I won’t tell you any more. He’s two metres tall, such and such a weight, and he’s 33.’
‘I have a situation in Naples … I don’t know how to tell you, it’s really not something to miss … 32 years old, 1 metre 93, very handsome …’
‘I have a Cuban situation.’
‘I’ve just arrived from Germany with a German.’
‘I have two blacks.’
‘X has a Croatian friend who wanted to see if you could find a time.’
‘I’ve got a footballer.’
‘I’ve got a guy from Abruzzo.’
Sometimes these exchanges revolve around both Christ and Viagra, which sums up the case very nicely.
After a long trial and several legal interventions, our ‘gentleman’ was sentenced for corruption; the Vatican choir was dissolved. Negretto now lives in a Catholic residence outside Italy, where people seem to satisfy his needs to buy his silence. As for the other intermediaries, whose identities I know, I haven’t been able to track them down. Not only were the implicated cardinals never sentenced, or even questioned, but their real names never appeared in the records of the trial.
Pope John Paul II, if he was ever informed of the case, was unable to separate, among his inner circle, the wheat from the chaff, probably because such a detoxification process would have involved too many people. Pope Benedi
ct XVI knew about this file, and did everything he could to marginalize the main protagonists, at first successfully, until the enterprise finally led, as we shall see, to his downfall. Francis, also well informed, punished the implicated bishop by refusing to create him a cardinal, in spite of the promise that he had been given by a former secretary of state. For now, Platinette kept his portfolio. The leader of the network and master of the battlefield, La Mongolfiera, took his gilded cardinal’s retirement: he still lives in luxury and, they say, with his lover. Of course, these prelates are now part of the opposition to Pope Francis; they harshly criticize any proposals he makes that are favourable to homosexuals, and demand ever greater chastity – even though they have practised it so little themselves.
The above affair would only be a minor news story were it not for the fact that it’s a template for recurrent behaviour in the Roman Curia. These aren’t glitches; this is a system. The prelates feel untouchable and fully enjoy their diplomatic immunity. However, we know their shortcomings and wickedness today, because witnesses have spoken. Even if attempts were made to shut them up.
Here we must return at greater length to an astonishing story closely bound up with the Mongolfiera affair. What a story it is! It’s what the Poet would have called a real ‘plot of genius’! The story concerns a discreet prelate, head of department at the Secretariat of State, Mgr Cesare Burgazzi, whose case was made public. (Since Burgazzi refused to answer my questions, in order to tell the story of this case I must rely on the detailed statements of two of his fellow priests, the evidence supplied by the police and the records of the resulting trials.)
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 32