Gay Popes Make Church-Shattering History
Gay Popes Make Church-Shattering History
A new Reformation might just be lurking round the corner
Homosexual popes have changed the course of history. Equally, homosexuality has changed the course of the papacy.
Who hasn’t heard of Pope Leo X — the pontiff who excommunicated the Augustinian monk Martin Luther? What is not very well known is that His Holiness Leo X was a homosexual who, quite literally, made church-shattering history.
Pope Francis’ Homosexual Agenda
Now, an eminent Catholic psychologist who has written extensively on homosexuality, is arguing that Pope Francis “himself is afflicted by one or another form of same-sex attractions” and hence has “a significant personal stake” in normalizing homosexuality.
In a recently published article, Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg notes that his assertion of Francis’ homosexuality is a “psychological diagnosis, not an accusation” and it is this tendency that prompts Francis to push for universal recognition of gay relationships within the Catholic Church.
Aardweg argues that Francis could also be promoting the gay agenda because he has come to “identify himself unrestrictedly with the ideology of the homosexual movement.”
If the psychologist is right, is Francis’ alleged homosexuality going to usher in a second season of church-shattering history as it did with Leo X in the 16th century?
Electing a Homosexual Pope
The very cardinal-electors who first blocked his candidacy elected Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who became a cardinal at the age of 13, to become Leo X because they knew he was a homosexual who might soon die as a result of an anal fistula caused by “unsafe sex.”
The fistula exploded while Cardinal de’ Medici was resident in the cramped quarters with his fellow-conclavists. The cardinals voted to crown the nepotistic Florentine as pope, hoping he would serve a brief pontificate and buy them time to find a more suitable successor.
“Nothing contributed more to his elevation to the papacy, than the wounds he had earlier received in Venerean [venereal] combat,” writes historian Pierre Bayle in his Dictionnaire Historique et Chronique (1697).
The Italian bishop, physician, and historian, Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), in his biography of Leo X, De vita Leonis decimi, located the fistula on the papal posterior, adding with a touch of irony, that this “does not necessitate the presumption of a disgraceful cause.”
Pope Leo’s Homosexual Horseplay
Leo X “did not escape the accusation of infamy, for the love he showed several of his [male] chamberlains — among the most high-born of Italy — smacked of scandal in its playful liberality,” Giovio records, while simultaneously praising Leo as a great leader.
Other contemporary Catholic historians testify to Leo X’s homosexuality. While in the first years of his pontificate, Leo was “extremely chaste,” writes historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), “he later discovered that he was excessively addicted, and every day more shamelessly, to those pleasures which cannot be honestly named.”
A pasquinade (anonymous satire posted on public spaces in Rome named after the poet Pasquino) from 1522 defines Leo X as: “Florentine, cheat, blind and paticone (passive sodomite).
Another pasquinade lampoons his ascent to the papal throne: “O Rome, when Leo married you, only bardasse [passive sodomites] and buffoons were held in high regard.”
Same-sex Addiction is Fatal
Analysing Pope Francis’ normalization of homoeroticism, Aardweg explains why papal sodomy is so disastrous: “The power of the dramatic crave to seek male affection, its attraction, is overwhelming, becoming ‘the meaning of my life’ to the sufferer of same-sex attraction and, rather than giving it up, the addicted person would give up everything else.”
“[I]t is enslavement, stronger than reason and weak will-power. There is certainly a demonic element to it,” the psychologist writes. “By normalizing same-sex feelings and morally justifying same-sex behavior one starts role-playing, adopting a false ‘self.’”
Note how contemporary psychologist Aardweg and the 16th century historian Guicciardini both describe homosexuality in the language of the pathology of “addiction.” Aardweg even attributes a “demonic element” to the vice.
For all the greatness he achieved culturally by commissioning artists like Michelangelo and Raphael, Leo X bankrupted the Church financially (by his lavish spending on rebuilding St. Peter’s Basilica) and spiritually (Leo’s ‘Indulgence-gate’ Ponzi scheme of getting souls out of purgatory for cash). The latter was the formal reason of the Reformation.
“God has given us the Papacy — let us enjoy it,” he is reputed to have said to his brother Giuliano. “How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through the ages,” Leo remarked to Cardinal Pietro Bembo, his secretary, when the latter quoted from the Gospels.
A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. The immorality of a religious leader has catastrophic consequences. “They are all like Sodom to me,” the prophet Jeremiah declaims in his thundering condemnation of Israel’s false prophets, an allusion that is self-explanatory.
'Indulgence Gate'
Catholic apologists love to paint Luther as the bad guy. But Catholic historians admit it was Leo X who was the primary cause of the Reformation that would split the Western Church in a seismic schism not experienced since the rending asunder of the Rome from the Eastern Churches in 1054 AD.
“He bears a heavy personal responsibility for the unfolding of the Protestant Reformation,” concedes Catholic architectural historian Dr. Stephen Withnell.
Luther’s letter to the Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, dated October 31, 1517, as well as his May 1518 letter to Pope Leo X, make it clear that Luther’s initial intention was directed only at a reform of indulgences and not at the papacy. In fact, Luther’s Thesis 61 even indicates that the Reformer accepted indulgences “as an act of the keys of authority.“
“His attack on the practice of indulgences was largely justified, and his teaching on indulgences, on which it was based and to which it was geared, was to remove the floor upon which indulgences stood,” (Leo’s innovation of the “treasury of merit”) admits Fr. Hubert Jedin, the greatest Catholic scholar on the Council of Trent.
“Over against the practice of indulgences one finds that theologians were collectively very critically disposed. From Peter Abelard to Courson, theologians strove against all too liberal and lavish indulgences,” Catholic dogmatic historian Prof. Ludwig Hödel concurs.
Instead of devoting his time to theology, Leo was preoccupied with his own sexuality. Aardweg’s critique of Pope Francis may well be applied to Leo X’s response to the outcry for reform that had been reverberating through the Catholic Church even before Jan Hus:
His documents on the issue of homosexuality are of low intellectual level, his slogans cheap demagogy. He refuses to answer the critical questions of the dubia cardinals, men of erudition and high integrity. The point is, he has no answer. He appoints gay and pro-gay men in key positions, tolerates no critique, and fires dissidents.
Luther did not leave the Catholic Church. He was excommunicated by Leo’s vituperative bull Exsurge Domine which, incidentally, recommends the burning of heretics as “the will of the Spirit.”
"Too Much Faggotry Around"
Historian Michael Wyatt describes the sexual culture of Leo X’s pontificate as “markedly homoerotic.” This scenario isn’t far removed from the sexual culture of today’s Vatican as revealed by journalist Frederic Martel in his bestseller In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy — a jaw-dropping exposé of gay cardinals, bishops, and high-ranking clergy in Rome.
Coincidentally, in June, Pope Francis himself infamously told a closed door meeting of the Italian Episcopal Conference that there is “too much faggotry around.” Certainly, there was “too much faggotry around” during the 15th and 16th centuries — the eras of the Renaissance and the Reformation — at least five popes of this period were homosexuals.
Pope Leo X changed the course of history. Pope Francis’ recent declaration permitting non-liturgical blessings for same-sex couples brought the Catholic Church to the brink of a second seismic schism as almost the entire episcopate of Africa revolted en masse against Fidicia supplicans.
Francis is undoubtedly making history. Equally, the Catholic priesthood and college of cardinals is so tightly packed with homosexuals that the next conclave could well change the course of the papacy and of history. A Reformation might just be lurking round the corner.
Originally published at Souls & Liberty.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.