666
the antichrist's almanac
2000 ONLINE EDITION
© D CHRISTIE SINTON ("ARNOUME

Holy homosexuals: history's gayest popes
Popes (WLD)

On January 2, 2000, gay Melbourne Catholic Michael Kelly accused Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Dr George Pell of being "evil" and "destructive" in his views towards homosexuals within the church.

Three weeks later, the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Winning, also came under fire by gay Scottish Catholic priest, Father Gordon Brown, for describing homosexual relationships as perverted ...

Michael Kelly, Father Gordon Brown and other gay Catholics may be pleased to hear that the views held by Archbishop Pell and Cardinal Winning were not shared by some of Catholicism's greatest leaders.

For as history shows, many popes themselves were either gay or bisexual.

And, of course, as every Catholic knows, the pope's actions - along with his words - are supposed to be "infallible ..."

So lock up your sons and take out your triple tiaras as we drag some of history's greatest censer-swirling, blessing-hurling Vicars of Vice out of their conclave cabinets ...

The Pope: "God's sales manager on earth ... An altar boy's wet dream."

- JG Eccarius, The Last Days Of Christ The Vampire

One pope who definitely would have disagreed with the views held by Archbishop Pell and Cardinal Winning is Paul II (1464-71).

Petulant, effeminate and a practising homosexual , Paul would have jumped at the chance of being placed at the head of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

It was well-known that Paul spent vast sums of church money on Mardi Gras-like parades, spectaculars, banquets and other "diversions of the Carnival".

He slept during the day and spent nights adorning himself with priceless jewellery and frolicking with his numerous boyfriends in the sumptuous rooms of the Vatican.

It was said Paul loved all things that glittered and wore a huge sparkling, jewel-encrusted tiara that "outweighed a palace in its worth".

Paul also was "into voyeurism and bondage" and liked nothing more than to watch naked men being racked and tortured in the papal dungeons.

It was said that during a particularly vigorous "session" on July 26, 1471, Paul died of a heart attack while being sodomised by one of his favourite boys ...

Alexander VI (1492-1503) has been described as one of the world's wealthiest men and "the most notorious pope in all history".

In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire said Alexander lived like a prince and held wild orgies involving men, women - even animals.

It was said Alexander liked to watch - and sometimes participate - as groups of men masturbated while servants "kept score of each man's orgasms".

"For the pope greatly admired virility," said Voltaire, "and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity."

After everyone was exhausted, Voltaire said, Alexander distributed prizes of cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics to those men who produced the most semen ...

Pope Julius II (1503-13) has been credited with introducing the Swiss soldiers who still guard the Vatican.

To Julius, "religion was not even a hobby" - but it appeared surrounding himself with attractive young men like the virile Swiss guards was.

Julius no doubt liked his guards' tights tight and their codpieces bulky.

Contemporary chroniclers described Julius as "a great sodomite" who "abused two young gentlemen, besides many others".

Famously, it was said Julius once committed "unnatural vice" with the gay sculptor Michelangelo, whom he had "pressured" into painting the Sistine Chapel ...

Leo X (1513-21) was said to have invited guests to lavish banquets with up to 65 courses at which little boys jumped naked out of puddings.

It was no secret Leo was "a lover of boys" who possessed also "an insatiable love of pleasure".

Like Pope Paul II, Leo loved parades and his passion was to travel around Rome at the head of a long procession featuring panthers, jesters, and a white elephant called Hanno - a gift from the King of Portugal.

Scholar Joseph McCabe said Leo was "a coarse, frivolous, cynical voluptuary, probably addicted to homosexual vice in the Vatican".

Leo spent much of his childhood in numerous abbeys which, like many monasteries since the time of Leo III (795-816), had become homosexual haunts.

Even before he became pope, Leo X allegedly had been a practising sodomite.

On the day of his election, Leo suffered from chronic ulcers and had to be carried into the conclave on a stretcher.

Not a few remarked that the ulcers had been caused by his "boyish predilections" ...

Julius III (1550-55) was said to have been a typical Renaissance pope in that, like Alexander VI, Julius II and Leo X, he loved banqueting, spectacles and other sensual pleasures.

Gay and incestuous, Julius took as his lovers both his bastard son, Bertuccino, and his adopted son, Innocenzo del Monte, whom he had picked up in the streets of Palma.

This caused a grave scandal especially when Julius made the 17-year-old Innocenzo first a cardinal and then head of the Secretariat of State ...

It was said Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-48), like Alexander VI, hosted lavish homosexual orgies and "manifested a precocity for all kinds of wickedness".

He was described as "a demon from Hell disguised as a priest" who turned the Lateran into the "best brothel in Rome".

Being the youngest pope to have ascended the throne - Benedict was 12 on his election - it appears the position went to his head.

He lived like a Turkish sultan and expressed his sexual leanings by having sex with men, women and animals.

The Catholic Encyclopedia described Benedict as "a disgrace to the Chair of St Peter".

Such depths of degradation were reached under Benedict's rule that, at age 23, an attempt was made to strangle him at the altar during mass on the feast of the apostles ...

The Catholic Encyclopedia said of Boniface VIII (1294-1303) that "his pontificate marks in history the decline of the medieval power and glory of the papacy".

A cardinal once said of Boniface: "He is all tongue and eyes, and the rest of him is all rotten".

The pontiff's most famous remark on the subject of homosexuality was that "it is no more a sin than to rub your hands together".

Boniface should know: he had at least two gay lovers - including Giacomo de Pisis and Guglielmo de Santa Floria ...

In 836, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle openly admitted that, following the rule of Pope Leo III (795-816), homosexuality was rife in many monasteries.

The situation was so bad that, before becoming a bishop, priests were asked whether they had sodomised a boy, had fornicated with an animal or had committed adultery.

It was not stated whether the applicant had to answer yes or no in order to be consecrated ...

In an effort to clean up homosexuality within the church, reformer St Peter Damian (1007-72) published a book called Gomorrahianus, or a Diversity of Crimes against Nature.

"A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situations is to be publicly flogged," he said.

When Damian tried to persuade Leo IX (1049-54) to expel homosexuals from the clergy, Leo flatly refused.

"If he got rid of the gays," said Nigel Cawthorne in his Sex Lives of the Popes, "perhaps he feared he would have had no one left ..."

The eminent German historian Leopold von Ranke dismissed Clement VII (1523-34) as "the most disastrous of all pontiffs".

He was described as a "sodomite" who had a taste for the exotic.

The Italian historian Gino Capponi said Clement kept as a paramour "a Moorish or mulatto slave".

Another chronicler observed Clement surrounded himself with pageboys whose jackets, under his rule, went from traditional knee-length to mid-buttock, "or even worse" ...

The Catholic Encyclopedia described John XXIII (1410-15) as "utterly worldly-minded, ambitious, crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral, a good soldier but no churchman".

In 1414, John was summoned before the Council of Constance accused of 70 crimes including sodomy, rape, incest and the murder of his predecessor, Alexander V (1406-10).

The Bishop of Salisbury, Robert Hallum, spoke for the majority of the Council when he said John "ought to be burnt at the stake" for his crimes.

Instead, the convicted sodomite was deposed where, in true church tradition, he later appeared as Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum before becoming Dean of the Sacred College in Rome ...

Sixtus IV (1471-84) was described as a man who "embodied the utmost possible concentration of human wickedness".

He "lowered the moral tone of Europe" when, in 1478, he issued a papal bull sanctioning the notorious Spanish Inquisition.

Of his personal life, it was said Sixtus was gay - or at least bisexual - and "very probably engaged in incest".

Sixtus made six "nephews" cardinals and was renowned as a "bountiful benefactor towards whores ...".

It has been said that where standards are high, double standards are higher - and nowhere is this more evident than in the church.

Throughout history, popes and priests spent their days railing against sodomy while nights were spent buried between the thighs of their favourite boys or brothers ...

It was not that long ago when gays outside the church found themselves being lowered naked on to a red-hot spike in a torture known as the chambre chaufee.

This was the church-approved method for interrogating homosexuals until 1816.

And it was not that long ago when gays were tied upside down, spread-eagled, while their bodies were sawn through slowly to the navel.

An inverted position ensured oxygen reached the brain so the victim remained conscious throughout the ordeal.

This position meant also that, as life ebbed away, the "sodomite" could look into the eyes of the priests and church leaders who not only condemned him ...