✣ Cardinal says there is a Vatican ‘gay lobby’
What happened? Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga said there was a “gay lobby” in the Vatican. The Honduran newspaper El Heraldo asked the cardinal whether there had been an “infiltration of the gay community in the Vatican”. Cardinal Rodríguez replied: “Not only that, also the Pope said there was even a ‘lobby’ in this sense.” He added: “Little by little the Pope is trying to purify it ... There is pastoral legislation to attend to them, but what is wrong cannot be truth.” What the media are saying Two years ago a Chilean Catholic website claimed that Pope Francis had told a meeting of the Latin American Confederation of Men and Women Religious that there was a “gay lobby” in the Church and “we have to see what we can do [about it]”. In a later in-flight interview he said: “So much is written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find anyone who can give me a Vatican identity card with ‘gay’ [written on it]. They say they are there.” But the idea gained more credence on the eve of the last family synod when a Vatican official, Mgr Krzystof Charamsa, declared he was gay and had a partner. The Catholic News Agency noted that Cardinal Rodríguez quashed any suggestion that Pope Francis wanted support for same-sex marriage. He said: “The natural law cannot be reformed.” What the vaticanisti are saying At Crux John Allen argued that the “gay lobby” that Pope Francis reportedly said he had to deal with is neither gay nor a lobby. He wrote: “When Italians say there’s a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican, they don’t mean an organised faction with the aim of changing Church teaching on homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Instead, what they have in mind is an informal, loosely organised network of clergy who support one another, keep one another’s secrets, and help one another move up the ladder. The group is perceived to have a vested interest in thwarting attempts at reform, since they benefit from secrecy and old-guard ways. In that sense, the term ‘gay lobby’ is often synonymous ... with corruption, secrecy and a sleazy sort of personal patronage.”
