Suspended Vatican Official Insists He Was Only Pretending to Be Gay
A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.
Well, at least he doesn't claim he has a "wide stance" and was picking up some toilet paper. At least there's that.
In an interview published Sunday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told La Repubblica daily he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the church with homosexual activity."
Vatican teaching holds that gays and lesbians should be treated with compassion and dignity but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."
Seriously, you should see my office--talk about intrinsically disordered!
God, I crack myself up.
The Vatican said Saturday it was suspending Stenico after he was secretly filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex is not sinful during a television program on gay priests broadcast October 1 on La7, a private Italian television network.
While Stenico's face was blurred in the footage, church officials recognized his Vatican office in the background and suspended him pending a church investigation.
What was the tipoff? The "Judy At Carnegie Hall" poster?
There have long been reports that there are gays in the Roman Catholic priesthood...
Really? Really?
... but the Stenico case is unusual because he is a relatively high-ranking Vatican official. He heads an office in the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy -- the main office overseeing all the world's priests. ...
"It's all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the church with my psychoanalyst work," La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying.
It was just another long, hard, throbbing day at the orifice. I mean office! Office!! A long, hard ... ah, screw it.
Stenico said he had met with the young man and pretended to talk about homosexuality "to better understand this mysterious and faraway world ...
Are there flying ponies? Please say there are flying ponies!
... which, by the fault of a few people -- among them some priests -- is doing so much harm to the church," La Repubblica quoted him as saying.
Italy's Sky TG24 said Stenico had written a letter to his superiors with a similar defense.
Calls placed to Stenico's home and office went unanswered Sunday.
In 2006 the Vatican denied Italian newspaper reports that an official in the office of the Secretary of State had been involved in a fight with police after he was stopped in a neighborhood frequented by transvestites and male prostitutes.
Wait ... Eddie Murphy works for the Vatican?
In 2002 a former official in the papal household, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, resigned as archbishop of the Polish city of Poznan over accusations that he had made sexual advances toward young clerics. He denied the accusations. (Nicole Winfield, AP)
Oh, just spend a couple days in rehab. That can cure anything these days.
2 comments:
Calls placed to Stenico's home and office went unanswered Sunday.
Of course they did. He was at mass.
there are gays in the Roman Catholic priesthood
A close brotherhood of men who have voluntarily given up the prospect of ever taking a wife? That is so not gay.
I think in this case "gay" is meant in the original sense, ie. "Insufferably happy, easygoing and carefree." And who would ever want to admit to that?
Post a Comment