Italian media reported that Pope Benedict XVI resigned after a “disturbing” confidential report of yet another Vatican scandal landed on his desk. Benedict had commissioned three cardinals (all over 80 years of age) to verify allegations exposed in the so-called VatiLeaks affair concerning financial improprieties. But the two-volume, red-leather bound dossier almost 300 pages in length went way beyond financial matters. It was when he received the scandalous secret report on December 17, 2012, that the Pope made the final decision to resign.
La Repubblica said that the report contained “an exact map of the mischief and the bad fish” inside the Holy See. It was about the breaking of the sixth and seventh commandments, which forbid adultery, including homosexual acts, and stealing, according to Vatican insiders. “The cardinals were said to have uncovered an underground gay network, whose members organize sexual meetings in several venues in Rome and Vatican City,” some of whom were being blackmailed by outsiders, said the report. The venues included a hair dressing salon in Vatican City itself as well as gay bars and night clubs in the city of Rome.
“What’s coming out is a very detailed X-ray of the Roman Curia that does not spare even the closest collaborators of the pope,” wrote a respected Vatican expert in Panorama, a conservative weekly. The report described a number of factions among Vatican officials in the Curia, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation.” La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to ‘external influence’ from laymen with whom they had links of a ‘worldly nature.’ The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.”
In one incident, a “senior Vatican official” was suspended from his duties when he was filmed making sexual overtures to a young man in a “sting” operation organized by an Italian TV program. In another, “a chorister was dismissed for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later a weekly news magazine used hidden cameras to record priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex.”
The report also focused on financial misdealings of the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR). Italian authorities are investigating the IOR in relation to money-laundering scandals that broke in the press last year. Apparently Vatican officials were either enriching themselves, or paying off blackmail bounty with Vatican money or both.
Though the three cardinals are too old to participate in the conclave, they will likely tell other cardinals what they uncovered and “will condition the conclave,” because they must elect a pope that is “immune to blackmail.” Benedict XVI will personally give the report to his successor.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi refused to comment on the matter saying that the report was causing “a tension that is the opposite of what the pope and the church want… Don’t expect comments or rebuttals of what is being said on this issue,” he said. But soon the Vatican issued rebuttals anyway denying that there was any verifiable links between the pope’s resignation and the revelations in the cardinals’ report. The Vatican however, did not deny the contents of the report submitted to Benedict by the investigative cardinals.
The Vatican is trying to become the global moral and ethical voice of reform in economics and politics. But the more the Vatican tries to cover her tracks, and make herself look good, the more the abominations and filth contained in its precincts is exposed to public scrutiny. Perhaps the angels are holding back the winds of strife by using Vatican scandals to keep world leaders from yielding to Vatican demands.
“Thus the message of the third angel will be proclaimed. As the time comes for it to be given with greatest power, the Lord will work through humble instruments, leading the minds of those who consecrate themselves to His service. The laborers will be qualified rather by the unction of His Spirit than by the training of literary institutions. Men of faith and prayer will be constrained to go forth with holy zeal, declaring the words which God gives them. The sins of Babylon will be laid open. The fearful results of enforcing the observances of the church by civil authority, the inroads of spiritualism, the stealthy but rapid progress of the papal power—all will be unmasked.” Great Controversy, page 606
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Revelation 17:4, 5
Vatican scandal cited in Pope resignation [1]
Report: Pope resigned in wake of gay priest scandal [2]
Papal resignation linked to inquiry into ‘Vatican gay officials’, says paper [3]
Vatican dismisses reports linking pope’s resignation to gay conclave discovery [4]