(Screenshot: YouTube/MundoNews)
Let’s start by saying this – everything that happened was between consenting adults, no kids were involved. In a Catholic Clerical context that perhaps makes this saga unusual.
What is the story here?
Father Francesco Spagnesi, 41, a highly regarded Tuscany priest, has made headlines globally. The news is that he has been arrested for stealing church funds to buy drugs for the gay sex parties that he was running out of his house. Some high profile media outlets have now run the story, for example …
- The UK’s Sunday Times – Priest ‘stole church funds to buy drugs for gay sex parties’
How did a man who dedicated his life to the Church end up like this?
Father Francesco started out in life pursuing a career in medicine, but he then took a rather sharp lefthand turn. He abandoned medical school at the age of 26, dropped out, and instead decided to dedicate his life to the church and became a Catholic priest.
The latest news started with the discovery that $117,000 was unaccounted for within his parish’s bank account. Initially, the response of the church was to keep it all a secret, so his local Bishop blocked his access and life went on. Father Francesco’s solution was to then ask parishioners for money to help the poor. He neglected to tell them that the poor in this case was him, and the need they were helping with involved his sex life.
The reason for the involvement of the police was not related to the missing funds or his sex parties. What brought all this out came via a tip to the police that Father Francesco’s roommate had imported a litre of the date rape drug GHB.
Yes, you read that correctly, a litre.
Once the police began investigating, they discovered the missing funds, joined up the dots and have now put him under house arrest. The Italian media have reported that the police are now in the process of interviewing about 200 people who have attended his gay sex parties over the last few years. Apparently Father Francesco and his roommate had been using dating sites to invite people to their orgies.
How did Father Francesco defend himself?
He is quoted in one story as saying that he did all this because he found a “fullness and a joy in making myself available to others”.
Pink News also has some interesting “before” and “after” insights gleaned via the local Italian media (they supply links) …
Local newspaper La Nazione reports that parishioners had “great faith in their young, brilliant, all-involving and refined priest,” but have now begun legal action to reclaim their money. At least two lawsuits for fraud have reached the prosecutor’s office, the publication said.
According to Milanese daily Corriere Della Sera, Spagnesi blamed a “cocaine vortex” for his actions and also disclosed that he is HIV positive.
“I don’t recognise myself anymore, the cocaine vortex has swallowed me,” he said tearfully before lawyers. “The drug made me betray my parishioners, it made me tell lies, it made me take actions that I am ashamed of. Now I’m HIV positive…”
Spagnesi added that he was taking antiretroviral medication which meant he could not transmit HIV.
What actually happened here?
This is where I begin to speculate a bit.
He must have been aware that he was gay before he joined a deeply homophobe organisation as a priest. If he had stuck with medical school he could potentially have found a loving partner and settled into a very happy life.
What may have happened is that at the age of 26 he found himself to be deeply conflicted because he had feelings for members of the same gender. Being culturally religious, he would have concluded that this was “sin” and so with deep feelings of guilt he abandoned medicine and turned to the priesthood in the hope that he could perhaps in some way redeem himself.
If that is correct, then some of what happened was perhaps inevitable.
You will have feelings for a specific gender. If you were told that such feelings were deeply wicked and you sincerely believed that to be true, would you be able to successfully suppress such feelings for all of your life?
For those that fit a specific personality profile, religion can be a safe haven, a comfort. For others, it can be a source of considerable anguish and torment. Human diversity is far greater than the expectations often set by religious constraints.
Belief is both Constructive and also Destructive
A rather common pattern of Christian testimony is something along these lines …
Life was a mess, I was a criminal/drug addict/ thief/depressed/alcoholic … etc … but then I found Jesus and so now all that is behind me. I have been redeemed and have a new life and a new heart now, I have the Holy Spirit in me.
It is true that some do indeed find that embracing religion brings them meaning and the result really is a better life. Belief however is a sword that is double edged. The deep dark secret, for some, that is often swept under the carpet, is that religion can also be utterly destructive to human lives.
Bigotry, intolerance, narrow mindedness, racism, homophobia, fanaticism, and emotional manipulative run rampant through many strands of belief.
Some on the inside are of course aware of this and simply rationalise it away with thoughts such as “Well, they are not true Christians” or “They do not really have Faith” or “That is the wrong variation of belief, they need my variation which is the only true one and not that other man-made variation” etc…
Thinking such thoughts enables a deeply held belief to remain intact and insulated from what really happens, and will inevitably continue to happen. Lives that are supposedly changed turn out to not have been changed for the better. The darkness that was supposedly banished still lurks, it was buried behind a religious facade.
Father Francesco stands accused of a crime. He is indeed responsible for his own actions and now faces the consequences. It can perhaps also be argued that he is a victim of the belief that he turned to and anchored himself into. He believed the lie he was told, that his feelings were an abomination. Because he supped from this chalice of deception, the one and only life he had has been shattered and it is now exposed for all to gaze upon.
Where did the idea of Clerical Celibacy come from?
The concept did not exist in the early church. Peter, who was supposedly the first Pope was married. Beyond Peter there is no evidence that Clerics in the very early church practised celibacy.
The first documented evidence of the emergence of the practise comes from the Synod of Elvira in 305 CE …
(Canon 33): “It is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests, and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children; whoever does this shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office.”
Even then it took many centuries after this declaration for it to become the practised norm for Catholic clerics. There exists abundant documentation that confirms that as late as the 12th century many priests in Europe were married and that their sons would often follow their path.
As a side note, one interesting argument for the emergence of the practise of celibacy relates to money. Unmarried clerics who amassed wealth via their clerical duties had nobody to officially inherit it all, and so the church retained all the accumulated wealth.
Father Francesco will be looked down upon by many for the supposed crime of sexual acts that are declared by some to be “unnatural” and an abomination. The key here is to perhaps understand that he sought refuge within a belief that demanded the ultimate unnatural act for any human, the total suppression of all human sexuality for an entire human lifespan.