One night in May 2006, Mgr Burgazzi was caught by the police, in his car, in an area of Rome well known for cruising and male prostitution, Valle Giulia, near the Villa Borghese. His car, a Ford Focus, had been seen several times driving around the area. When they tried to take him in, the police reportedly spotted shadows moving in the darkened car, which had the seats down. They tried to apprehend – either for voyeurism or for an assault on public morals – the unfortunate prelate, who took flight at the wheel of his vehicle. There followed a 20-minute car chase across Rome which ended, as in a Hollywood film, in a big crash. Two police cars were damaged, three policemen injured. ‘You don’t know who I am! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!’ Burgazzi yelled when he was arrested, sporting a black eye after playing a little too hard on the bumper-cars.
The case was so unremarkable, and so frequent an occurrence in the Vatican, that it seems not to be of great interest. There are numerous such instances buried in police files all over the world, involving priests, prelates and even cardinals. But in this case, things aren’t so simple. According to the version given by the police, who state that they showed their badges, condoms were found in Mgr Burgazzi’s car, as well as his religious vestments, since the priest was arrested in plain clothes. Last of all, the police took the prelate’s phone and identified a call made ‘to a Brazilian transsexual named Wellington’.
For his part, Cesare Burgazzi has always claimed that the police were in plain clothes and their cars unmarked. He said he believed in good faith that they were trying to rob him, and that he even called the emergency services several times. The prelate also denied contacting the transsexual Wellington, and having condoms in his car. He claimed that several points in the police statement were false, and that their injuries were less serious than they claimed (as the court would agree on appeal). In the end, Burgazzi swore that, fearing an attempted robbery, he had only been trying to flee.
This theory of policemen disguised as highway robbers, or vice versa, seems fantastical to say the least. But the prelate repeated it so often, and the police were so incapable of proving the contrary, that the trial lasted longer than expected. At first, Burgazzi was relaxed, taking into account the vagueness of the police statements. But he appealed, and so did the prosecution: he in order to be totally exonerated; the police to have him sentenced, which was what happened on appeal when the court accepted the police version of events. Burgazzi then took the case to the court of cassation, where the affair ended, eight years after the events, with a definitive acquittal on all charges.
If the verdict was clear, the circumstances of the case remained at the very least obscure. Among other hypotheses, it is not impossible that Burgazzi fell into a trap. According to this idea, which is put forward by several people familiar with the case, it should be borne in mind that Burgazzi is a prudent man, and well informed. Within the context of his functions at the Vatican, he is said to have discovered the scandalous financial practices and homosexual double life of several cardinals from Pope John Paul II’s immediate entourage: a baffling mixture of money being siphoned off from the Vatican Bank, parallel bank accounts and prostitution networks. Cautious and, it was claimed, incorruptible, the spirited Burgazzi is even said to have made photocopies of all the documentation and put them in a safe, whose code was known only to his lawyer. Shortly afterwards, summoning up all his courage, he requested a personal meeting with the most powerful of those cardinals, with whom he shared his discoveries and asked for an explanation. We do not know the tenor of their discussions. What we do know, on the other hand, is that Burgazzi did not pass this file on to the press – proof of his loyalty to the Church and his aversion to scandal.
Did Burgazzi’s threat have a connection with the incredible case at the Villa Borghese? Is it possible that the powerful cardinal implicated in the case might have taken fright and tried to neutralize the prelate? Was a trap set up for Burgazzi to compromise him and force him into silence, with the assistance of people close to the Italian police, and perhaps real police officers (a chief of police was known to be close to the cardinal in question)? Did they want to compromise him to the extent that his possible revelations would lose all credibility? All of these questions will probably go unanswered for a long time.
But we do know that Pope Benedict XVI, elected during the long judicial process that followed, insisted that Burgazzi be restored to his post at the Secretariat of State. He is even supposed to have met him during a mass and said to him: ‘I know everything; keep going’ (according to a witness who was told this story by Burgazzi).
This unexpected support from the pope in person is an indication of the anxiety that the affair caused in the Vatican, and lends a certain credence to the hypothesis of manipulation. Because it’s hard not to be surprised by the shaky statements given by the police officers, their suspicious evidence, which the courts definitively rejected. Were they fabricated? To what end? For what possible backers? Is it possible that Cesare Burgazzi was the victim of a machination organized by one of his peers to shut him up or blackmail him? The criminal chamber of the Italian court of cassation, by finding him definitively not guilty and contesting the version given by the police officers, lent credibility to these hypotheses.
Cases involving money and morals, which are often closely linked in the Vatican, are therefore one of the keys to The Closet. Cardinal Raffaele Farina, one of those most familiar with these financial scandals (at Francis’s request, he presided over the commission for the reform of the Vatican Bank), was the first to put me on the trail of these cross-connections. During two long interviews that he granted to me at his home in the holy see, in the presence of my Italian researcher Daniele, Farina described these unlikely collusions as being coupled like ‘two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose’, in Shakespeare’s words. The cardinal, of course, gave no names, but he and I both know who he was alluding to by stressing, with the confidence of one who has the evidence, that at the Vatican the love of boys goes hand in hand with the worship of the golden calf.
The explanations outlined by Farina and confirmed by several other cardinals, bishops and experts in the Vatican are in fact sociological rules. The very high percentage of homosexuals within the Roman Curia first of all explains – statistically, if we may put it that way – that several of them were at the centre of financial scandals. Added to this, there is the fact that to maintain relations in such a closed and controlled universe, framed by Swiss Guards, the police and who knows what else, one must be extremely prudent. Which offers only four alternatives: the first is monogamy, chosen by a significant proportion of prelates, who have fewer adventures than the rest. If they are not in stable couples, homosexuals engage in a more complicated life that entails one of the three remaining options: travelling to find sexual freedom (that is the royal road often taken by nuncios and assistants of the Secretariat of State, as we will see); going to specialist commercial bars; or visiting male prostitutes. In all three cases, you need money. And yet a priest’s wages are usually somewhere in the region of 1,000 to 1,500 euros per month, often with pension and work accommodation thrown in – sums that are far from sufficient when it comes to satisfying complicated desires. The priests and bishops at the Vatican are not rich in funds: they are, it is said, ‘minimum wage-earners who live like princes’.
In the end, the double life of a homosexual in the Vatican implies very strict control of one’s private life, a culture of secrecy and financial needs: all incitements to camouflage and lies. All of this serves to explain the dangerous liaisons between money and sex, the proliferation of financial scandals and homosexual intrigues, and the rings of lust that developed under John Paul II, in a city that has become a byword for corruption.
12
The Swiss Guard
Nathanaël encountered two problems at the Vatican: girls and homosexuals. The scarcity of the former and the omnipresence of the latter.
I met this Swiss Guard by chance, when I was
staying at the Vatican. I was a bit lost in the maze of stairs and he showed me the way. He wasn’t shy; we fell into conversation.
At first I thought that Nathanaël was one of the contractual staff who intervened within the Vatican if things went wrong. The blue overalls that he wore that day made him look like an ordinary Italian worker. So I was surprised to see him a few days later in the red, yellow and blue ‘gala’ uniform: he was a Swiss Guard! A Swiss Guard with a toolbox!
I contacted Nathanaël again some time later, on another stay in Rome, and then I encountered his polite but firm refusal to see me again. I would later learn that this was one of the rules imposed on the Swiss Guard. For reasons I shall not go into here, he did agree to talk to me in the end, and we developed the habit of meeting at the Café Makasar, in the Borgo, only a few minutes’ walk from the barracks of the Swiss Guard, but far from the places frequented by either monsignori or tourists, and hence discreet in a way that suited both of us.
Tall, with a long face, charming, Nathanaël was clearly very sociable. At our initial meeting, he told me his first name (altered here) and his telephone number; his surname was revealed to me only subsequently, and inadvertently, when I entered his details on my smartphone and his mobile number was automatically ‘matched’ with his Google + account. However, Nathanaël isn’t on Instagram or Facebook, and there is no photograph of him on Google Images, according to a strict Vatican rule that imposes extreme discretion on the Swiss Guard.
‘No selfies, no profiles on social media,’ Nathanaël confirms to me.
Girls and homosexuals, as stated, are the two problems that the Swiss Guard faces at the holy see. Since taking the job, he has managed to sleep ‘with ten girls’, he tells me, but the obligation of celibacy is a nuisance. And the rules are strict.
‘We have to be at the barracks before midnight and we can never stay out. We are forbidden to be in a couple, since marriage is only authorized for senior officers, and it is strictly forbidden to bring girls back to the barracks. We are discouraged from meeting them in town, and denunciation is sometimes encouraged.’
These prudish obsessions of the old bogeymen at the Vatican bother Nathanaël, who considers that the essential questions, involving the sovereign missions of the Guard, are not taken into account – questions concerning the security of the pope, which in his view leaves much to be desired. I tell him that I have frequently returned to the Vatican via the gate called Arco delle Campare – the most magical of all, beneath the clock to the left of St Peter’s in Rome – without having to show any kind of ID, and without my bag being searched, because a cardinal or an ordinary priest living inside had come out to fetch me. I showed him a key I had which allowed me to enter the Vatican, without any inspection, when I returned to the apartment in which I was staying. The Swiss Guard was troubled by my experiences.
During about a dozen secret meetings at the Café Makasar, he revealed to me what really troubled him in the Vatican: the sustained and sometimes aggressive advances of certain cardinals.
‘If just one of them touches me, I’ll smash his face in and resign,’ he tells me in explicit terms.
Nathanaël isn’t gay, or even gay-friendly: he tells me of his revulsion at several cardinals and bishops who tried it on with him (and gives me their names). He was traumatized by what he had discovered in the Vatican in terms of double lives, sexual advances and even harassment.
‘I’ve been disgusted by what I’ve seen. I still haven’t got over it. And to think that I took a vow to “sacrifice my life” if necessary, for the pope!’
And yet, had not the worm been in the apple from the outset? The Swiss Guard was founded in 1506 by Pope Julius II, whose bisexuality is well attested. As for the uniform of the smallest army in the world, a Renaissance rainbow-flag jacket and a two-pointed halberdier’s hat decorated with heron feathers, according to legend it was designed by Michelangelo.
A police lieutenant colonel in Rome tells me that the Swiss Guard adhere to strict professional secrecy. ‘There’s an incredible omertà. They are taught to lie for the pope, for reasons of state. There are plenty of cases of harassment or sexual abuse, but they are hushed up and the Swiss Guard is always made indirectly responsible for what happened. They are given to understand that if they talk, they won’t find another job. On the other hand, if they behave themselves, they will be helped to find a job when they return to civilian life in Switzerland. Their future career depends on their silence.’
In the course of my investigation, I interviewed 11 Swiss Guards. Apart from Nathanaël, whom I saw regularly in Rome, most of my contacts were made on the military pilgrimage to Lourdes or, in Switzerland, with former guardsmen whom I was able to meet during more than 30 stays in Zurich, Basel, St Gallen, Lucerne, Geneva and Lausanne. They have been reliable sources for this book, informing me about the morals of the Curia and the double lives of many cardinals who have, matter-of-factly, flirted with them.
I met Alexis at the Brasserie Versailles. Every year, on a large-scale pilgrimage, thousands of police officers and members of the armed forces from all over the world, all practising Catholics, meet up in Lourdes, a French city in the Pyrenees. A gathering of Swiss Guards traditionally takes place, and Alexis was among them the year when I went there. (His first name has been altered.)
‘Here are the Swiss Guard at last,’ exclaims Thierry, the manager of the brasserie, delighted to see the brightly coloured soldiers who attract customers and improve his turnover.
The military pilgrimage to Lourdes is a khaki and multicoloured festival in which dozens of countries are represented: you will see hats with fluorescent feathers, sharp, flashing swords, pompoms, men in kilts and all kinds of brass bands. They pray fervently and get wildly drunk, particularly on the Pont Vieux. There I see hundreds of Catholic soldiers singing, dancing and chatting people up. There are few women; homosexuals are in the closet. Binge drinking for Catholics!
In this huge booze-up, the Swiss Guards remain the number-one attraction, as I was told by the lieutenant colonel of the carabinieri who helped me attend the Lourdes pilgrimage.
‘You will see,’ he told me, ‘far from Rome the Swiss Guards let themselves go a little. The pressure is less intense than it is in the Vatican, control by the officers relaxes, alcohol makes exchanges more fluid. They start talking!’
Alexis, indeed, relaxed: ‘In Lourdes, we don’t wear the gala uniform all the time,’ the young man tells me as soon as he arrives at Brasserie Versailles. ‘Last night we were in plain clothes. It’s dangerous for our image if we’re wearing the red, yellow and blue uniform and we’re a bit tipsy!’
Alexis is no more gay-friendly than Nathanaël. He vehemently denies the received idea that the pontifical Swiss Guard has a high percentage of homosexuals. He suspects four or five of his comrades of being ‘probably gay’, and of course he knows the rumours about the homosexuality of one of the senior officers in the Swiss Guard of Pope Paul VI, who now lives with his partner in the Roman suburbs. He also knows, as everyone does, that several cardinals and bishops have caused a scandal within the Vatican by being in a couple with a Swiss Guard. And, of course, he knows the story of the triple murder, within the Vatican itself, when a young corporal of the Guard, Cédric Tornay, was reported to have murdered his Swiss Guard commander and his wife ‘in a moment of madness’.
‘That’s the official version, but no one in the Guards believes it,’ Alexis tells me. ‘In fact Cédric’s suicide was staged. He was murdered along with his commander and his wife, before a macabre scene was staged to make people believe in the theory of suicide after the double murder.’ (I won’t dwell here on this dramatic case, which has already been amply covered elsewhere, and about which the most esoteric hypotheses have circulated. Among these, for our subject, we need only mention that the hypothesis of a relationship between the young corporal and his commander was sometimes put forward, without really convincing anyone; their relationship, whether real or imagined, might h
ave been used to conceal another motive for the crime. In either case, the mystery remains. For the sake of justice, Pope Francis would reopen this depressing dossier.
Like Nathanaël, Alexis had passes made at him by dozens of cardinals and bishops, to the point that he thought of resigning from the Guard. ‘The harassment is so insistent that I said to myself that I was going straight home. Many of us are exasperated by the usually rather indiscreet advances of the cardinals and bishops.’
Alexis tells me that one of his colleagues was regularly called in the middle of the night by a cardinal who said he needed him in his room. Other similar incidents were revealed by the press: from the inconsequential gift left on the bed of a Swiss Guard, along with a visiting card, to more advanced passes that could be called harassment or sexual aggression.
‘It took me a long time to realize that we were surrounded, at the Vatican, by frustrated men who see the Swiss Guard as fresh meat. They impose celibacy on us and refuse to let us marry because they want to keep us for themselves, it’s as simple as that. They are so misogynistic, so perverse! They would like us to be like them: secret homosexuals!’
According to Alexis, Nathanaël and at least three other former Guards I interviewed in Switzerland, the internal rules are quite precise where homosexuality is concerned, even though it is barely mentioned as such during their training. The Swiss Guard are invited to demonstrate ‘very great courtesy’ towards cardinals, bishops ‘and all the monsignori’. The ones thought of as ‘little birdies’ are asked to be obliging and extremely polite. They must never criticize an eminence or an excellency, or refuse them anything. After all, a cardinal is the apostle of Christ on earth!
This courtesy, though, must be a façade, according to an unwritten rule of the Guard. As soon as a cardinal gives his telephone number to a young soldier, or suggests that he join him for a coffee, the Swiss Guard must thank him but politely tell him he is unavailable. If the cardinal is insistent, he must receive the same reply every time, and any rendezvous, should the Guard be intimidated into attending, must be cancelled on some pretext involving guard duty. In the most obvious cases of harassment, the Swiss Guard are invited to talk about it to their superiors, but under no circumstances should they respond to, criticize or report a prelate. The affair is almost always brushed under the carpet.
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 33