In the Closet of the Vatican

by Frédéric Martel

  Some traces remain of that religious training, which has now dissipated. In Paris, I continue the Provençal tradition, which consists of making a crib scene every year with little figurines bought at the santon fair in Marseille (we also eat at Christmas the famous ‘13 desserts’). I worked for several years on the journal Esprit; my cinematic tastes were shaped by the thought of the Catholic critic André Bazin. If, as a reader of Kant, Nietzsche and Darwin, and a son of Rousseau and Descartes more than Pascal – I’m French, after all! – I can no longer be a believer today, not even a ‘cultural Christian’, I respect Christian culture and therefore the ‘(cultural) genius of Christianity’. And I like that phrase from a French prime minister who said: ‘I’m a Protestant atheist.’ Let’s say, then, that I’m a ‘Catholic atheist’, an atheist of Catholic culture. Or, to put it another way, I’m a ‘Rimbaldien’.

  In my parish near Avignon (which Louis also left after being appointed curé to another town in Provence in 1981), Catholicism has declined. The curé, the Poet writes, ‘has taken away the key of the church’. A church which didn’t know how to move with its times: it relied on the celibacy of the priesthood, which is, as we can tell today, deeply unnatural, and forbade the sacraments to divorced people, even though most of the families in my village are now stepfamilies. Whereas there were three masses every Sunday with three priests in my church, there is now only one, every third Sunday, the travelling curé who has come from Africa, running from one parish to another, in this suburb of Avignon, which is now a Catholic desert. In France, about 800 priests die every year; fewer than a hundred are ordained … Catholicism is gradually fading away.

  For me too, Catholicism is a page that has been turned, without resentment or rancour, without animosity or anticlericalism. And soon Father Louis moved away too.

  I learned of his death when I was living in Paris, and the loss of my priest at the age of 53 made me terribly sad. I wanted to pay tribute to him, so I wrote a little piece for the local pages of the daily paper Le Provençal (now La Provence), published anonymously under the title ‘The Death of Father Louis’. Now I am rereading this article, which I have just rediscovered, and at the end of it I refer slightly naively to the Italian film Cinema Paradiso and its old Sicilian projectionist Alfredo, who taught the hero, Totò, a choirboy, to live; he was later able to free himself from the parish cinema and become a film director in Rome. And with those words, I said farewell to Louis.

  And yet I would find him again almost twenty-five years later.

  When I was finishing this book, and when I had lost trace of Father Louis for many years, he re-entered my life unexpectedly. One of Louis’s female friends, a progressive parishioner with whom I had stayed in contact, told me about the end of his life. Far from Avignon, living in Paris, I had known nothing about it; and nobody in the parish had known his secrets. Louis was homosexual. He lived a double life which, retrospectively, made sense of his paradoxes, his ambiguities. Like so many priests, he tried to marry his faith and his sexual orientation. It seems to me, as I remember this atypical priest whom we loved so much, that he was troubled by a pain within, a sadness. But it is possible that this reading is merely retrospective.

  I have also learned of the conditions of his death. In his biography, which the diocese gave me when I did my research, the end of his life is discreetly set out: ‘Retired Priests’ Hostel in Aix-en-Provence from 1992 until 1994’. But speaking to his friends, another reality appeared: Louis died of AIDS.

  During those years when the illness was almost always fatal, and just before – alas – he was able to benefit from anti-retroviral drugs, Louis was first treated at the Institut Paoli-Calmette in Marseille, a hospital that specialized in the treatment of AIDS early on, before being moved to a clinic in Villeneuve d’Aix-en-Provence, run by the Sisters of the Chapel of St Thomas. That was where he died ‘desperately waiting’, I was told, for a treatment that did not arrive in time. He never really talked about his homosexuality and denied the nature of his illness. Most of his religious colleagues, probably informed about the nature of his condition, abandoned him. Demonstrating solidarity would have meant, here again, supporting a gay priest and perhaps running the risk of being suspected. The authorities of the diocese preferred to hide the causes of his death and most of the priests who had worked alongside him, frightened now, vanished as soon as he was bedridden. He contacted them, but none of them replied. Hardly anyone visited him. (One of the few priests who stayed with him until the end wondered, when I interviewed him, whether it wasn’t Louis who wanted to put distance between himself and his co-religionists; Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, currently Bishop of Bordeaux, who was at the time an auxiliary vicar in Marseille, whom I questioned over lunch in Bordeaux, remembered Father Louis but told me he had forgotten the details of his death.)

  ‘He died on his own, abandoned by almost everyone, in terrible pain. He didn’t want to die. He rebelled against death,’ says one of the women, a left-wing Christian, who was with him at the end of his life.

  Today, I think of the suffering of that man on his own, rejected by the Church – his only family – denied by his diocese and kept at arm’s length by his bishop. That all happened under the pontificate of John Paul II.

  AIDS? A priest with AIDS? ‘I simply had to frown as if someone had set out a difficult problem. It took me a long time to understand that I was going to die of a disease that is found rarely among people of my age.’ That was the reaction of the young country priest, learning that he has contracted stomach cancer, in that fine novel by Georges Bernanos and the even more magnificent film by Robert Bresson. The young man also says: ‘I did repeat to myself that nothing had changed in me, but still the thought of going home with this thing made me ashamed.’ I don’t know if Louis thought the same thing during his own martyrdom. I don’t know whether, in his fragility and his distress, he believed and thought, like Bernanos’s priest: ‘God withdrew from me’.

  In fact, Louis was never a ‘country priest’, as the subtitle of the collection of his homilies reveals. The comparison with Bernanos’s curé, looking for the help of grace, is therefore slightly deceptive. Louis never had an ordinary, modest life. He was an aristocratic priest who, taking the path opposite to the one adopted by many official prelates, who are born poor and end up in lust and luxury in the Vatican; he began his life in the aristocracy and ended it in contact with simple people, and I know that in that reversal, for him and for them, homosexuality played its part.

  It is incomprehensible to me that the church could have been insensitive to his Via Dolorosa. That his Christ-like suffering, bad blood, filth and fainting received no response from the diocese was for a long time a scandal to me – a mystery. It makes me shiver to think of it.

  Only the nuns of the Chapel of Saint Thomas, magnificently devoted, surrounded him with their anonymous affection until his death in early summer 1994. A bishop finally agreed to preside over the ceremony. Louis was then cremated in Manosque in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (burials of AIDS patients were forbidden at the time and cremation was mandatory). Some days later, in line with his wishes, his ashes were scattered in the sea, very discreetly, by four women, two of whom told me of the scene, from a little boat that he had bought at the end of his life, a few kilometres from Marseille, off the ‘Calanques’, where we had sometimes gone together. And in that region, that magnificent ‘country’, the ‘South’ of France – which we call ‘the Midi’ – they say that the only events are the storms.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Closet is the account of an investigation carried out for over four years, in Italy and in over thirty countries. In all, 1,500 interviews were conducted for the book: among them were 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios, secretaries of nunciatures or foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss Guards and over 200 Catholic priests and seminarians. Most of the information included here is first hand, collected by the author in person and on the ground (no interviews have b
een carried out by phone or email).

  Most of the 41 cardinals I have met in the course of over 130 interviews are members of the Roman Curia. Here is the list: Angelo Bagnasco, Lorenzo Baldisseri, Giuseppe Betori, the late Dario Castrillón Hoyos, Francesco Coccopalmerio, Stanisław Dziwisz, Roger Etchegaray, Raffaele Farina, Fernando Filoni, Julián Herranz, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Walter Kasper, Dominique Mamberti, Renato Raffaele Martino, Laurent Monsengwo, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Juan José Omella, Jaime Ortega, Carlos Osoro, Marc Ouellet, George Pell, Paul Poupard, Giovanni Battista Re, Jean-Pierre Ricard, Franc Rodé, Camillo Ruini, Louis Raphaël Sako, Leonardo Sandri, Odilo Scherer, Achille Silvestrini, James Francis Stafford, Daniel Sturla, the late Jean-Louis Tauran, Jozef Tomko (seven other cardinals I interviewed do not appear here and remain anonymous because they explicitly asked to remain ‘off the record’).

  To carry out this investigation, I lived regularly in Rome, for an average of a week a month, between 2015 and 2018. I was also able to stay several times within the Vatican and was given lodgings in two other extraterritorial residences in the holy see, including, for a long time, the Domus International Paulus VI (or Casa del Clero) and Domus Romana Sacerdotalis. I also carried out investigations in about fifty Italian cities, including, several times, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Naples and Venice, as well as Castel Gandolfo, Cortona, Genoa, Ostia, Palermo, Perugia, Pisa, Pordenone, Spoleto, Tivoli, Trento, Trieste and Turin.

  Apart from the Vatican City and Italy, I have carried out investigations in about thirty other countries to which I travelled for the purposes of research: Argentina (Buenos Aires, San Miguel; 2014, 2017), Belgium (Brussels, Mons; several stays between 2015 and 2018), Bolivia (La Paz; 2015), Brazil (Belém, Brasilia, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo; 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Chile (Salvador; 2014, 2017), Colombia (Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellin; 2014, 2015, 2017), Cuba (Havana; 2014, 2015, 2016), Ecuador (Quito; 2015), Egypt (Alexandria, Cairo; 2014, 2015),Germany (several visits to Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Regensburg; 2015–18), Hong Kong (2014, 2015), India (New Delhi; 2015), Israel (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dead Sea; 2015, 2016), Japan (Tokyo; 2016), Jordan (Amman; 2016), Lebanon (Beirut, Bkerké; 2015, 2017), Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, Puebla,Veracruz, Xalapa; 2014, 2016, 2018), Palestine (Gaza, Ramallah; 2015, 2016), the Netherlands (Amsterdam; several visits between 2015 and 2018), Peru (Arequipa, Lima; 2014, 2015), Poland (Krakow, Warsaw; 2013, 2018), Portugal (Lisbon, Porto; 2016, 2017), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh; 2018), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid; many visits between 2015 and 2018), Switzerland (Basel, Coire, Geneva, Illnau-Effretikon, Lausanne, Lucerne, St Gallen and Zurich; several visits between 2015 and 2018), Tunisia (Tunis; 2018), United Arab Emirates (Dubai; 2016), United Kingdom (London; several visits between 2014 and 2018), Uruguay (Montevideo; 2017) United States (Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington; 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). Also before the beginning of this investigation I travelled to about twenty other countries, including Algeria, Canada, Cameroon, China, Denmark, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam etc., which also provided useful information.

  The Closet is based on rigorously precise quotations and sources. Most of the interviews were recorded, with the agreement of my interlocutors, or carried out in the presence of a researcher or translator, who was witness to them; all in all, I have almost four hundred hours of recordings. The quotations, in line with typical journalistic practice, have been reproduced verbatim.

  As we might guess, the private testimonies of cardinals and prelates are infinitely more interesting than their public statements. Since my intention was not to ‘out’ living priests, I have chosen to protect my sources. And even though I am, on principle, quite reserved about unattributed statements, this book would not have been possible without this anonymization. I have however tried to limit their number to a minimum, preferring instead to use in the text the information communicated by the people I have interviewed. Similarly, in a few rare cases, and at their request, I have agreed to change the names of certain priests (the pseudonyms used have been clearly indicated throughout the book, and all come from characters created by André Gide). As for the cardinals Platinette and La Mongolfiera, the archbishop La Païva, or the famous monsignori Jessica and Negretto, they are ‘authentic pseudonyms’, if I can put it like that, used secretly at the Vatican. Any reader trying to make a connection between a pseudonym and a real name, or who comes across anonymized sources, would inevitably get lost.

  An investigation of this kind could never have been conducted by one author working alone. To complete it, I have benefited from a team including over 80 collaborators, translators, advisers and researchers around the world. Among them, I should like to cite and thank here my main researchers who have accompanied me over this long adventure. The Italian journalist Daniele Particelli worked with me for three years and accompanied me constantly in Rome and Italy. In Argentina and Chile, Andrés Herrera carried out lengthy investigations for me on my various Hispanic visits. In Colombia, Emmanuel Neisa was a constant help. In Paris, the Mexican Luis Chumacero, who was able to translate to and from six languages, was my assistant. I also had the constant help of: René Buonocore, Fabricio Sorbara and the soldiers, police officers and carabinieri of the LGBT association ‘Polis Aperta’ in Italy; Enrique Anartelazo in Spain; Guilherme Altmayer, Tom Avendaño and Andrei Netto in Brazil; Pablo Simonetti in Chile; Miroslaw Wlekły, Marcin Wójcik and Jerzy Szczesny in Poland; Vassily Klimentov in Russia; Antonio Martínez Velázquez, Guillermo Osorno, Marcela Gonzáles Durán and Eliezer Ojedo Felix in Mexico; Jürg Koller, Meinrad Furrer and Martin Zimper in Switzerland; Michael Brinkschröder, Sergey Lagodinsky and Volker Beck in Germany; Michael Denneny in the US; Hady ElHady in Egypt, Dubai and Lebanon; Abbas Saad in Lebanon and Jordan; Benny and Irit Ziffer in Israel; Louis de Strycker and Bruno Selun in Belgium; Erwin Cameron in South Africa; Nathan Marcel-Millet and Ignacio González in Cuba; Julian Gorodischer and David Jacobson in Argentina; Julia Mitsubizaya and Jonas Pulver in Japan; Rafael Luciani in Colombia and Venezuela; Alberto Servat in Peru; Martin Peake in Australia. (The complete list of this team of over 80 researchers in this book is available online.)

  During my research for this book, I made four broadcasts about the Vatican for national radio on France Culture, several articles for Slate and the journal Esprit, and organized a colloquium about the diplomacy of Pope Francis at the University Sciences-Po-Paris. These parallel projects fed into this book, and afforded the opportunity for fruitful encounters.

  I am infinitely grateful to my translators for their work – and their speed – particularly Matteo Schianchi (for the Italian), who has already translated three of my books, and Shaun Whiteside (for English).

  My main editor, Jean-Luc Barré (at Robert Laffont/Editis), has believed in this book from early on: he was an attentive editor and a vigilant proofreader, without whom the book wouldn’t exist. At Robert Laffont, Cécile Boyer-Runge has actively defended the project. At Feltrinelli, in Milan, I also owe a great deal to my Italian editors: my loyal friend Carlo Feltrinelli – who has believed in this book since 2015 – and of course Gianluca Foglia, who coordinated its publication; but also my editors Alessia Dimitri and Camilla Cottafavi. Robin Baird-Smith (Bloomsbury) was the vital editor of this book for the Anglo-Saxon world, along with his colleague Jamie Birkett. I also thank Blanca Rosa Roca, Carlos Ramos and Enrique Murillo and Pawel Gozlinski. I would also like to thank my Italian literary agent Valeria Frasca, as well as, for the Hispanic world, my adviser Marcela González Durán, and for the rest of the world, Benita Edzard.

  For their proofreading and fact-checking, I would like to thank my friends Stéphane Foin, Andrés Herrera, Emmanuel Paquette, Daniele Particelli, Marie-Laure Defretin and three priests, an archbishop and a renowned Vaticanologist who must remain anonymous. The journalist Pasquale Quaranta has constantly helped me in Rome over the past four years. I also thank Sophie Berlin and Rei
nier Bullain. I should also like to thank my 28 ‘sources’ within the Roman Curia – monsignori, priests, religious and lay people – all openly gay with me, who work or live in the Vatican every day: they were regular informants over four years, sometimes my ‘hosts’ in the Vatican, and without them this book would not have seen the light of day. Understandably, they have all remained anonymous in this book.

  This book is accompanied and defended by a consortium of about fifteen lawyers, coordinated by the Frenchman Maître William Bourdon, the author’s lawyer: Maître Appoline Cagnat (Bourdon & Associés) in France; Massimiliano Magistretti in Italy; Scott R. Wilson, Esq., in the United States; Maya Abu-Deeb (of Bloomsbury) and Felicity McMahon (of 5RB) in the United Kingdom; Juan Garcés in Spain; Juan Pablo Hermosilla in Chile; Antonio Martínez in Mexico; the legal office of Teixeira, Martis & Advogados in Brazil; Jürg Koller in Switzerland; Sergey Lagodinsky in Germany. Valérie Robe was my legal adviser for the French edition.

  Finally, this book relies on a very large number of written sources, footnotes and a wide-ranging bibliography containing over a thousand references to books and articles. Since the format of this book does not allow us to cite them here, interested researchers and readers will find, free online, in a document of 300 pages, all of these sources as well as three unpublished chapters (my journey to the real Sodom in Israel-Palestine-Jordan; a part about Brazil; and a text on the art and culture of the Vatican). All quotations are also given here with their references as well as 23 fragments from Rimbaud, ‘the Poet’ in this book.