Between 2001 – the Dutch ‘shock’ – and 2015 – the date when ‘same-sex marriage’ was authorized in the United States by the Supreme Court, confirming the lasting defeat of the holy see – an unprecedented battle would be played out in countless apostolic nunciatures and episcopates. Under Paul VI, there were only 73 ambassadors from the holy see, but their number reached 178 by the end of John Paul II’s pontificate (there are 183 today). Everywhere, mobilization against civil unions and gay marriage would become one of the Vatican’s priorities, and the louder the prelates, the more deafening the silence about their double lives.
In the Netherlands, François Bacqué was asked to mobilize bishops and Catholic associations to incite them to take to the streets and make the government go back on its decision. But the nuncio quickly realized that most of the Dutch episcopate, apart from the cardinals appointed by Rome (including the very anti-gay ‘Wim’ Eijk), were moderate if not liberal. The base of the Church was progressive, and had for a long time been calling for the end of the celibacy of the priesthood, the opening of communion to divorced couples and even the recognition of homosexual unions. The Dutch battle was lost in advance.
At the Human Rights Council, resistance against the ‘pink wave’ seemed more promising. The question of marriage had no chance of coming up for debate, given the radical opposition of the Muslim countries or several countries in Asia. However, Sodano warned the nuncio Tomasi, who had just arrived in Switzerland, that they would have to oppose with all their might the decriminalization of homosexuality, which would, here too, set a bad example and, via the snowball effect, open up the way to the acknowledgement of gay couples.
Proposals to depenalize homosexuality at the level of the United Nations already existed. Brazil, New Zealand and Norway had made some modest attempts, starting in 2003, to breach the subject, as Boris Dittrich explained during an interview in Amsterdam. ‘For a long time I was a militant and a politician; and after helping to change the law of the Netherlands I thought we had to continue this fight at an international level.’ This member of the Dutch parliament, a former magistrate, was the architect of gay marriage in his country.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Benedict XVI was elected and Sodano was replaced, against his will, by Tarcisio Bertone at the head of the Roman Curia. The new pope, in turn, made his opposition to homosexual marriage a priority and, perhaps, even a personal matter.
In fact, what the nuncio Tomasi did not yet understand, and what the cardinals in the Vatican under-estimated, too blinded by their prejudices, was that the state of affairs was changing in the mid-2000s. A pro-gay dynamic had taken hold in many Western countries, those of the European Union even wanting to imitate the Dutch model.
At the United Nations, the balance of power also changed when France chose to make the depenalization of homosexuality its priority, taking the head of the presidency of the European Union. Several countries in Latin America, including Argentina and Brazil, also went on the offensive. One African country, Gabon, as well as Croatia and Japan, joined this ‘core group’, which would bring the battle to Geneva and New York.
After months of secret inter-state negotiations, in which the Vatican was never involved, the decision was taken to present a text to the General Assembly of the United Nations, due to be held in New York in December 2008. The ‘recommendation’ would not be binding, unlike a ‘resolution’, which must be approved by the majority of voters, but the symbol would be no less powerful.
‘I thought we mustn’t defend a resolution if we weren’t certain of obtaining the majority of votes,’ Dittrich confirms. ‘Otherwise we risked ending up with an official decision by the United Nations against the rights of homosexuals, and we would have lost the battle for a long time.’
To make sure that the debate did not appear strictly Western, and to avoid a gulf being created between the countries of the North and those of the South, the diplomats of the ‘core group’ invited Argentina to make the official declaration. So the idea would be universal, and defended on all continents.
Until 2007, Silvano Tomasi didn’t take the threat seriously. But in Rome, the new ‘minister’ of foreign affairs of Benedict XVI, the Frenchman Dominique Mamberti, who was very familiar with the set of problems around homosexuality, got wind of the project. Apostolic nuncios are generally well informed. Information quickly reached the holy see. Mamberti alerted the holy father and Cardinal Bertone.
Pope Benedict XVI, who made the refusal of any acknowledgement of homosexuality one of the key elements of his career, despaired of the situation. During a trip he made in person to the headquarters of the United Nations in New York on 18 April 2008, he took advantage of a private meeting with Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the organization, to lecture him. The pope reminded the secretary general of his absolute hostility, in muted but emphatic terms, towards any form of acceptance of the rights of homosexuals. Ban Ki-moon listened respectfully to the impassioned pope; and shortly afterwards he made the defence of gay rights one of his priorities.
Since before the summer of 2008, the Vatican had been convinced that a pro-LGBT declaration would be submitted to the United Nations. The reaction of the holy see was manifested in two directions. First of all, nuncios were called to intervene with governments to stop them doing something irreparable. But very quickly, the Vatican discovered that all the European countries, without exception, would vote for the declaration. Including Poland, dear to John Paul II’s heart, and Berlusconi’s Italy! The secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, who was now in charge of the dossier, short-circuiting the Italian Episcopal Conference, became increasingly worked up and used all his political contacts in the Palazzo Chigi and parliament, but still couldn’t change the position of the Italian government.
Second, the Vatican also tested some states that looked likely to swing, but everywhere, in Australia, Israel and Japan, governments were preparing to sign the declaration. In Latin America in particular almost all Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries went in the same direction. Cristina Kirchner’s Argentina confirmed that they were ready to make the text public, and there were also rumours that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, at the head of the Argentinian Episcopal Conference, was hostile to any form of discrimination.
The Vatican came up with a sophisticated, if not a sophistical position, built on specious if not fallacious arguments: ‘No one is for the penalization of homosexuality or its criminalization,’ the holy see insisted, going on to explain that existing texts on human rights were ‘enough’. Creating new ones would mean running the risk, under the pretext of battling injustice, of creating ‘new forms of discrimination’. The diplomats of the Vatican finally fought against the expressions ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’, which in their view had no value in international law. To acknowledge them might lead to the legitimation of polygamy or sexual abuse. (Here I am quoting the terms that appeared in diplomatic telegrams.)
‘The Vatican dared to stir up a fear of paedophilia to prevent the depenalization of homosexuality! It was incredible! The argument was very specious given what we know of the number of cases involving paedophile priests,’ a French diplomat who took part in the negotiations stresses.
In opposing the extension of human rights to homosexuals, Benedict XVI’s Vatican reconnected with the old Catholic suspicion of international law. For Joseph Ratzinger, the norms that he turned into a dogma were divine in essence: they were therefore imposed on states because they were superior to them. This ultramontanism soon came to seem anachronistic. Francis, after his election, would prove deeply hostile to ‘clericalism’, and would do his best to bring the Church back into the world order, forgetting the outdated notions of Benedict XVI.
When this Ratzingerian strategy failed, the holy see changed its method. Because it was no longer possible to convince the ‘rich’ countries of its stance, the time had come to mobilize the ‘poor’ ones. In Geneva, Silvano Tomasi tried to block the UN process, raising awareness amon
g his colleagues from Muslim, Asian and particularly African countries (which he was well informed about from having been an observer with the African Union in Addis Ababa). His fellow nuncio at the United Nations in New York, Celestino Migliore, who replaced Renato Martino, did likewise. Pope Benedict, from Rome, agitated as well, slightly lost in every sense of the word.
‘The line of our diplomacy was along the lines of what I would call the voice of reason and common sense. We are in favour of the universal and not of particular interests,’ Silvano Tomasi told me simply, to explain the Catholic Church’s opposition to the UN declaration.
It was then that the Vatican committed an error that many Western diplomats considered a historic mistake. In its new crusade, the holy see sealed agreements with several Muslim dictatorships or theocracies. In diplomacy, this is called a ‘reversal of alliance’.
The Vatican thus joined a disparate contingency coalition, approaching Iran, Syria, Egypt, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and even Saudi Arabia, with which it didn’t even have diplomatic relations! According to corroborative sources, apostolic nuncios engaged in numerous dialogues with the heads of states in which they were otherwise in conflict on the issues of the death penalty, religious freedom and human rights in general.
On 18 December 2008, as planned, Argentina defended the ‘Declaration on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’ before the General Assembly of the United Nations. The initiative received the support of 66 countries: all the states of the European Union signed it, without exception, as well as 6 African countries, 4 Asian countries, 13 in Latin America, as well as Israel, Australia and Canada. For the first time in the history of the UN, states of all continents spoke out against human rights violations based on sexual orientation.
‘It was a very moving historical session. I admit I was on the brink of tears,’ Jean-Maurice Ripert, the French ambassador at the UN who piloted the ‘core group’, admitted when I interviewed him in Paris.
As was also predicted, a counter-declaration, ‘Supposed Notions of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’, was read out in parallel by Syria, in the name of 59 other countries. This text was based on the defence of the family as a ‘natural and fundamental element of society’, and criticized the creation of ‘new rights’ and ‘new standards’ that betray the spirit of the UN. In particular, the text condemned the expression ‘sexual orientation’, which was criticized for having no basis in international law, and because it would open the way to a legitimation of ‘numerous deplorable acts, including paedophilia’. Almost all the Arab countries supported this counter-declaration, as well as 31 African countries, several countries in Asia, and of course Iran. Among the signatories was Benedict XVI’s Vatican.
‘The Vatican aligned itself inadmissibly with Iran and Saudi Arabia. It could at least have abstained,’ says Sergio Rovasio, the president of the gay association Certi Diritti, close to the Italian Radical Party, during our interview in Florence. All the more so, since 68 ‘neutral’ countries like China, Turkey, India, South Africa or Russia, refused to associate themselves with the text presented by Argentina or the counter-declaration from Syria. The Vatican, in the end, could have imitated them.
When I questioned the nuncio Silvano Tomasi on the Vatican’s position, he regretted that this declaration marked ‘the beginning of a movement in the international community and the United Nations to integrate gay rights within the overall agenda of human rights’. The remark is fairly accurate. Between 2001, the date of the adoption of marriage for homosexual couples in the Netherlands, and the end of the pontificate of Benedict XVI in 2013, international ‘momentum’ had developed on gay issues.
The American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said precisely this when she declared to the United Nations in Geneva, in December 2011: ‘Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. (…) Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.’
The diplomats of the Vatican listened in silence to this message, adopted today by most Western and Latin American governments: either you embrace human rights completely, or not at all.
And yet, until the end of his pontificate, Benedict XVI refused to let go. On the contrary, he would also take up the fight against civil unions and gay marriage. In fact, yet again, the pope made it a question of principle. But did he realize that this battle was, like the previous one, lost in advance?
‘For a man like Benedict XVI, the battle against homosexuality had always been a great cause of his life. He couldn’t even imagine gay marriage being legalized,’ a Curia priest confirms to me.
At this dark moment, there was no question of retreating, even if it meant losing out! So he launched himself blindly, thrown into the lions’ den like the first Christians, come what may!
The irrational and dizzying history of this crazed commitment against gay marriage is a crucial chapter in this book, since it reveals an army of homophilic priests and closeted homosexual prelates who, day after day, would mobilize against another army of ‘openly gay’ activists. The war over gay marriage was, more than ever, a battle between homosexuals.
Before dealing at length with Spain and Italy in the next few chapters, I will start by telling the story of this battle on the basis of my interviews on the ground in three countries: Peru, Portugal and Colombia.
With a little white goatee, a big watch and a brown suede jacket, Carlos Bruce is an unmissable figure in Latin America’s LGBT community. I met this MP, twice a minister in moderate right-wing governments, several times in Lima, in 2014 and 2015. He described to me a context that was generally favourable to gay rights on the continent, although specific national characteristics might rein in that dynamic, as they do in Peru. There is an active gay scene in Lima, as I have been able to observe, and tolerance is on the rise. But the recognition of the rights of gay couples, civil unions and gay marriage bumped up against the Catholic Church, which prevented any progress, in spite of the Church’s moral failure evidenced by the increasing number of cases of paedophilia.
‘Here, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani is viscerally homophobic. He talks about homosexuals as “adulterated and damaged goods”, and for him gay marriage is comparable, in his words, to the Holocaust. And yet, when a bishop was accused of sexual abuse in the region of Ayacucho, Cipriani came to his defence!’ Carlos Bruce remarks, visibly disgusted.
A member of Opus Dei, Cipriani was created cardinal by John Paul II thanks to the active support of Vatican secretary of state Angelo Sodano, and, like him, he has been criticized for his links with the far right and his animosity towards liberation theology. It is true that certain priests close to this current of thought have been able to take up arms alongside Maoist guerrillas like Sendero Luminoso or, more Guevarist, the MRTA – which terrorized the conservative clergy. Apart from these local peculiarities, the cardinal has succeeded like so many of his co-religionists in squaring the circle: being both violently hostile to marriage between people of the same sex (even civil unions still don’t exist in Peru) and failing to denounce paedophile priests.
During the 2000s, Cardinal Cipriani delivered so many anti-gay speeches that he was contradicted and publicly called to account by the new mayor of Lima, Susana Villarán, even though she is a convinced Catholic. She was so exasperated by the double standards of Cardinal Cipriani, who is opposed to gay rights but remains discreet about paedophile priests, that she waged war against him. She appeared at Gay Pride and mocked the bogeyman cardinal.
‘Here, the chief resistance to gay rights,’ Carlos Bruce adds, ‘is the Catholic Church, as it is everywhere in Latin America, but I think the homophobes are busy losing ground. People are very clear on the subject of the protection of gay couples.’
This is a judgement also shared by the journalist Alberto Servat, an influential cultural critic whom I met several times in Lima: ‘These repeated sexual scandals in the Church are very shocking to public opinion. And
Cardinal Cipriani gave the impression of doing nothing to limit sexual abuse. One of the accused priests is now a refugee in the Vatican …’
And Carlos Bruce concluded, making concrete suggestions that would mean a definitive repudiation of Cipriani: ‘I think the Church must accept all the consequences of moral failure: it must stop criticizing homosexual relations between consenting adults, and authorize marriage; then it must abandon its silence about sexual abuse and completely abandon its general and institutionalized cover-up strategy, Finally, because this is the key to the problem, it must end the celibacy of the priesthood.’
In Portugal, where I went twice for this investigation, in 2016 and 2017, the debate on gay marriage was the reverse of the one in Peru or the rest of Europe, because the Catholic hierarchy didn’t follow Rome’s instructions. Whereas in France, Spain and Italy, for example, cardinals anticipated and supported the position of Benedict XVI, the Portuguese episcopate, on the contrary, weakened prejudices. The cardinal at that time, in 2009–10, was the Archbishop of Lisbon: José Policarpo.
‘Policarpo was a moderate. He never did what Rome told him to. He calmly voiced his disagreement with the planned law on gay marriage, but refused to let the bishops take to the streets,’ the journalist António Marujo, a religious specialist who co-wrote a book with Policarpo, explains to me.
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 42