John Allen Jr. has much better coverage of this<\/a> with information not presented in other stories.<\/p>\n A monsignor in the Vatican\ufffds Congregation for Clergy has been suspended after being caught on hidden camera in a recent Italian TV broadcast about gays in the priesthood, in which he and other priests made contact with a young man posing as a potential \ufffddate\ufffd in gay-oriented web sites and chat rooms, and then arranged for meetings the priests apparently believed would lead to sexual encounters.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the disclosures, the Vatican official in question, Italian Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, claims that he was only pretending to be gay in order to uncover what he described as plots to damage the church by targeting vulnerable priests with homosexual tendencies. <\/p>\n
… Yesterday, however, a statement from Stenico appeared on the Italian Catholic web site \ufffdPetrus,\ufffd where his commentaries appear regularly. Stenico, who holds a degree in psychology in addition to his theological training, said that after discussions with his spiritual director, he decided to become a \ufffdthief among thieves\ufffd to determine if there was an effort to damage the church through the weaknesses of gay priests.<\/p>\n
\ufffdI discovered that there is,\ufffd Stenico wrote. \ufffdThere\ufffds a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists that single out priests.\ufffd<\/p>\n
Stenico said that his aim in pretending to be gay was to understand this world, not to participate in it. Stenico also asserted that being caught on a hidden camera could be a form of retribution for having earlier complained to police about a young man who offered him sexual favors in exchange for his help in obtaining a job.<\/p>\n
\ufffdI\ufffdve lived my life as a priest persecuted by much calumny, envy and jealousy,\ufffd Stenico wrote.<\/p>\n
Before his recent difficulties, Stenico appeared regularly on the Italian Catholic TV network Telepace and on Radio Maria, where he had a monthly program on \ufffdEvangelization, Catechesis and Catechists.\ufffd<\/p>\n
In the \ufffdExit\ufffd broadcast, Stenico meets the young man posing as his \ufffddate\ufffd in St. Peter\ufffds Square, and the two get into the priest\ufffds car and enter the Vatican through a parking garage. They enter a Vatican office, where Stenico talks at some length about the church and homosexuality, defending, for example, the church\ufffds position that marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman, while conceding the possibility of other legal arrangements for same-sex couples. They also briefly discuss sado-masochism, with Stenico referring to it as \ufffda choice within the psychological depths of a personality.\ufffd<\/p>\n
At one point, the priest says to the young man \ufffdI\ufffdm waiting for you \ufffd come here,\ufffd and at another tells him \ufffdyou\ufffdre very cute, you\ufffdre completely cute.\ufffd The young man then says, \ufffdYou\ufffdre about to commit a sin with me before the eyes of God,\ufffd to which the priest responds, \ufffdNo, I don\ufffdt feel that it\ufffds a sin.\ufffd When the young man does not respond, the priest later identified as Stenico says it\ufffds clear that the young man is feeling \ufffdconflicted.\ufffd The priest says he will put him on the elevator to leave, advising him not to say anything if someone approaches him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You don’t often see headlines such as this one. Catholic Church suspends gay priest whose cover was blown by office decor There have been plenty of new stories about the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}