Benedict XVI claimed gay ‘clubs’ are rampant in U.S. seminaries in … – Washington Examiner
The late Pope Benedict XVI claimed that “homosexual clubs” operate openly in many Catholic seminaries, especially in the United States, in a new book published after his death.
Benedict, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013, died on Dec. 31, 2022, but authored a series of essays in Italian that was published after his death in the book What Christianity Is.
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“In several seminaries, homosexual clubs operate more or less openly,” Benedict wrote in the book, according to the Telegraph. He added that such clubs were most prevalent in U.S. seminaries.
The former pope wrote that some bishops had allowed seminaries to show pornographic films to students and warned that the training of new priests faced a possible “collapse.”
The number of Catholic priests in the U.S. has continuously declined for decades. Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate placed the total number of U.S. priests in 1965 at 59,426. In 2021, that number had declined to 34,923.
The 16 essays in the book, four of which were not previously published, were compiled by Elio Guerriero, who was reportedly told by the late pontiff not to publish the collection until after his death. All of the essays were written after his resignation in 2013.
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“I do not want to publish anything else in my life,” Benedict reportedly told Guerriero. “The fury of the circles opposed to me in Germany is so strong that the appearance of any word from me immediately provokes a murderous clamor on their part. I want to spare myself and Christendom this.”
Other essays in the book touched on the practice of clerical celibacy in the Catholic priesthood, the reforms of the Catholic mass following the Second Vatican Council, and the differences between Protestant communion services and the Catholic mass.