A gay male escort in Italy who reportedly said he’s fed up with the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy has compiled a dossier exposing the identities of 34 “actively gay” priests and six seminarians, according to the Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera.
The dossier, which was put together by escort Francesco Mangiacapra, was handed over to the Vatican by the archdiocese of Naples.
None of the 40 priests and seminarians were accused of pedophilia, and Mangiacapra said that the dossier was meant to expose “sins, not crimes.” The 1,200 page document contained Whatsapp chat logs and sexually explicit photos, among other pieces of evidence.
“The aim is not to hurt the people mentioned, but to help them understand that their double life, however seemingly convenient, is not useful to them or to all the people for whom they should be a guide and an example to follow,” Mangiacapra said, as reported by the Corriere della Sera.
The “sinful” nature of the was of the utmost concern to Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, who said he forward the dossier to the Vatican because “there remains the gravity of the cases for which those who have erred must pay the price, and be helped to repent for the harm done.”
If only Catholic Church treated pedophile priests with this kind of urgency.
While some questioned the ethics of outing the private lives of priests, Hement Mehta of the Friendly Atheist says that they don’t deserve any sympathy.
“If these priests want to pretend there’s something immoral about same-sex relationships to the point where they’re fighting LGBTQ rights around the world, all while engaging in sexual acts with other men themselves, then they deserve to be called out on their harmful hypocrisy,” Mehta writes.
