Before beginning this commentary let me say in advance to those who will complain, I am not anti-Catholic, nor anti any religion for that matter. However as with anti-gay Conservatives there does come a time when one needs to comment on the groups and in the case of religion, the institutions which do everything to strike at, defame and seek to block any advancement of a segment of society, in this case of course the LGBT community.
My own “family tree” is a diversified one when it comes to religion. There are Catholics, Episcopalians, agnostics too I’m sure, Presbyterians and there have even been a Baptist or two thrown in for good measure. With that being said I apologize in advance only to members of my “family tree” who were brought up in the Catholic faith for this less than flattering piece.
This week the Catholic Church, and indeed the heart and soul of it, the Vatican, was rocked by news of a member of the Vatican choir who is alleged to have arranged gay sexual liaisons, or pimping in the vulgar and more accurate description, for an Italian government official who is also a papal usher or as is described a “gentleman of his Holiness”. While many news organizations covered this, for the sake of simplicity I’ll use CNN’s report for snippets.
A Nigerian man who sang in a Vatican choir arranged gay liaisons for an Italian government official who served in the unpaid role of papal usher, according to transcripts of wiretaps collected by Italian authorities.
The purported conversations were between Angelo Balducci, who oversaw the Italian government’s awarding of construction contracts — including work on the airport at Perugia — and Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 39-year-old Nigerian singer. They were recorded between April 14, 2008, and January 20, 2010.
Ehiem said an escort friend introduced him to the Italian businessman more than a decade ago. “He asked me to do it with him, but I like women and just the thought grossed me out,” Ehiem said.
“He asked me if I could procure him other men. He told me that he was married and that it had to be done in great secrecy. I told him that there was the Internet. But he asked me to take care of it because he couldn’t do it from his home.”
He added, “Sometimes he would ask for two meetings a day.”
Now one can well argue that this in fact has nothing to do directly with the Vatican, nor the Catholic Church and Ehiem was procuring men on his own. True, but, as the CNN article reports among the men Ethiem was alleged to pimp were members of the seminary. How close to home does that ring in the hundreds, if not thousands of reported incidents of child abuse and sexual exploitation by Catholic priests over the decades, incidents which the Catholic Church and directly or indirectly the Vatican, does everything in its power to ignore, silence, pay off or shuffle a “problem priest’ from one church or diocese to another.
This is not about a priest being gay or bi-sexual. This is about pedophiles taking advantage of their young wards if you will, for acts “as” sinful, if indeed not more so, than what the Catholic Church in its dogma and piety says about the LGBT community while at the same time sweeping its pedophilia “problem” under the rug whenever possible.
It never ceases to amaze this writer how those, be it the church or politicians,who have the most to lose, are the most sanctimonious and pious when it comes to LGBTs and denying and achieving some semblance of equality as every other American, yet have skeletons in their closet which they hide until someone eventually finds the key and then when that door is open all of a sudden they are filled with remorse, guilt and seek forgiveness.
After the media has stopped covering events and people’s memories fade, they again continue their “Holy Crusade” against LGBTs. The ones who do not forget are the members of the LGBT community who will not be hesitant in reminding those with short memories of the “falls from Grace” of the self-righteous.
