MailOnline.ca.uk
Last updated at 12:24 PM on 23rd July 2010
By Nick Pisa
A gay priest sex scandal has rocked the Catholic Church in Italy today after a weekly news magazine released details of a shock investigation it had carried out.
Using hidden cameras, a journalist from Panorama magazine – owned by Italian Prime Minister and media baron Silvio Berlusconi – filmed three priests as they attended gay nightspots and had casual sex.
Today there was no immediate comment from the Italian Bishops Conference and the Vatican – which has been rocked by a series of sex scandals involving paedophile priests since the start of the year.
A preview of the Panorama article sent out by email last night added that video footage from the investigation would be made available.
The article describes how the reporter was assisted by a gay ‘accomplice’ as they ‘gate-crashed the wild nights of a number of priests in Rome who live a surprising double-life.’
In it’s preview, Panorama added: ‘By day they are regular priests, complete with dog collar, but, at night it’s off with the cassock as they take their place as perfectly integrated members of the Italian capital’s gay scene.’
Panorama described its investigation as ‘deeply disturbing’ as it detailed how three priests – two Italians and a Frenchman – happily took part in gay events and had casual sex.
The Catholic Church forbids priests to have sex and homosexuality is also seen as a ‘sin’ .
In 2008 the Vatican issued guidelines which said that any would be trainees should not join if they had ‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’.
In one part of the investigation Panorama said that one priest, named as Carlo, willingly put on his cassock to have sex with the reporter’s gay accomplice, adding ‘all of which was filmed by the hidden camera’.
The magazine also described how they had attended a Mass which was celebrated by Carlo.
In its preview Panorama insisted that it had carried out through checks and established that all three priests were bona fide but would not reveal their real names or any other details.
Panorama editor Giorgio Mule said: ‘This was a two week investigation and was not aimed at creating a scandal but showing that a certain section of the clergy behaves very differently.’
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Italian church says gay priests should not lead ‘double life,’ or leave priesthood
sympatico.ca
23/07/2010 8:31:00 PM
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
ROME – The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal, has lashed out at gay priests who are leading a double life, urging them to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.
The Diocese of Rome issued the strongly worded statement Friday after the conservative Panorama newsweekly said in a cover story and accompanying video that it had interviewed three gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to gay clubs and bars and to sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.
One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.
In a statement Friday, the Rome diocese denounced those priests who were leading a “double life,” said they shouldn’t have been ordained and promised that the church would rigorously pursue anyone who is behaving in a way that wasn’t dignified for a priest.
It insisted that the vast majority of Rome’s 1,300 priests were truthful to their vocations and were “models of morality for all.”
Those who aren’t faithful to their vows “know that no one is forcing them to remain priests, taking advantage of only the benefits,” the diocese said. “Coherency would demand that they come forward. We don’t wish any ill-will against them, but we cannot accept that because of their behaviour the honour of all the others is sullied.”
No one knows the exact number of gays in the priesthood. Estimates of the number of gays in U.S. seminaries and the priesthood range from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, according to a review of research by the Rev. Donald Cozzens, an author of “The Changing Face of the Priesthood.”
Church teaching holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” and the Vatican has recently cracked down on gays in the priesthood.
In his first major policy statement as pope, Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 issued an instruction barring actively gay priests from seminaries. The Instruction said men “who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’” cannot be admitted to seminaries. The only exception would be for those with a “transitory problem” that had been overcome for at least three years.
The fact that the document was being worked on came to light in 2002 at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the United States. A study commissioned by U.S. bishops found that most abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys.
Experts on sex offenders say homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest young people, but that hasn’t stifled questions about gay seminarians.
The Rome diocese appeared to link the two, quoting Benedict in denouncing the sins of priests in reference to the Panorama article. The pontiff had used those words to deplore pedophile priests, not gay priests.
One Catholic commentator noted that the problem wasn’t that there were “three priests running wild in gay Rome.”
“There are plenty of priests – straight and gay – who misbehave sexually with other adults,” said Bryan Cones, managing editor of the liberal U.S. Catholic Magazine.
“The problem is that only these gay priests are the news, not all the other gay priests who labour faithfully, honouring their commitments along with their straight brothers as best they can. We don’t hear their stories because they can’t tell them for fear of expulsion. And that isn’t right.”
The arrest of a popular Connecticut priest who frequented male escorts and strip bars made international headlines earlier this month after he was arrested and charged with first-degree larceny, accused of stealing $1.3 million over seven years from the church to finance his lavish lifestyle.