VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
John L. Allen Jr. | Jun. 12, 2013 NCR Today
Reports that Pope Francis allegedly referred to a “gay lobby” in the Vatican during a private session with Latin American religious have revived interest in a storyline that first erupted in February, following the surprise resignation announcement by Pope Benedict XVI and at the peak of the furor over the Vatican leaks affair.
Back then, Italian news outlets created a sensation by claiming that a commission of three cardinals empaneled by Benedict to investigate the leaks scandal identified a “gay lobby” potentially involved in airing the Vatican’s dirty laundry. The reports also hinted that this lobby may have been behind Benedict’s decision to step down.
Although the Vatican insisted the pope quit for his stated reasons, meaning age and exhaustion, the Italian contretemps nevertheless turbo-charged frustration about how the Vatican was being run and probably contributed to the election of a complete outsider to the papacy with a track record of good governance in just five ballots.
It should be stressed that the reports in the air today are based on leaked notes from the meeting with Francis, and the Vatican has refused to confirm or deny their content, so we don’t actually know what the pope said. Nonetheless, because the “gay lobby” business is back in the headlines, I’ll repeat here what I said in February.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.