VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Accusations are swirling about a secret gay cabal inside the Vatican’s pope-protecting forces and how much it knew about the departure of Pope Benedict.
For more than a year now, there has been ample talk around Rome about a powerful gay lobby at work inside the Vatican. When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in February 2013, rumors were rampant that the alleged gay lobby was part of the reason he left the papacy. Apparently the gay lobby was so powerful it was given ample ink in a still-secret red-covered dossier presented to Benedict as part of a Vatileaks internal investigation after his butler was convicted of stealing his private papers.
The new Pope Francis even referred to the gay lobby at a June 6 meeting with Latin American prelates. “In the Curia there are holy people, truly holy people,” Francis reportedly told the Latin American delegation. “But there is also a current of corruption, also there is, it is true … They speak of a ‘gay lobby,’ and that is true, it is there.”
Fresh allegations now point to the lobby extending deep into the Swiss Guard, the pope’s elite protective security force, who are known for their striped yellow, red, orange and blue Renaissance uniforms. The elite troops are specially trained Swiss soldiers between the age of 19 and 30. The job pays around $1,000 a month and includes room and board. In 1998, an unknown guard apparently murdered a commander and the man’s wife in what many inside the Vatican suspected was a gay love triangle. The case remains a mystery and was the biggest scandal to rock the Swiss Guard. Until now.
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