"This is not a cupboard, it's a cage": speak the gay priests of the Catholic Church – 18/02/2019

Gregory Greiten was 17 when the priests organized this game. It was in 1982 and they were in a retreat on the St. Lawrence, a Catholic seminary for teenagers who wanted to become priests.

The leaders asked the boys what they preferred: to have 90% of the body burned, to be paraplegic or to be gay.

None chose to be gay.

They called it "The game of life".

This was the lesson: seven years later, Gregory went to the window of his seminary room, one leg suspended: "I'm really gay", he says for the first time, he remembers today near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is a priest.

It was like a death sentence.

The closet of Catholic priests turns an impossible contradiction. For years, church leaders have afraid of homobadual parishioners, whose behaviors gave "shame" and represented "a mess".

And even then, thousands of priests are homobaduals.

The stories of gay priests are silenced, hidden from the outside world: they know each other only if they know each other.

In the United States fewer than 10 priests have been encouraged to become public. But gays are between 30% and 40% of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from the community itself and researchers. Some priests claim that this proportion approaches 75%.

Over the last 2 months, more than 20 gay priests and seminarians from 13 states shared intimate details with The New York Times.

Almost all claimed strict confidentiality to speak without fear of sanctions bishops or their superiors. A handful of them have specifically forbidden them to leave the closet or even talk about homobaduality.

Most of them are active and may lose several jobs if they say they are homobaduals. The Church almost always controls priests' housing, health insurance and retirement. These 3 things can be cut off if a bishop determines that there is a "disqualifying baduality"and it does not matter if this priest respects the wish of celibacy.

The environment for gay priests has become more dangerous. The fall of Theodore McCarrick (a powerful cardinal who was expelled from the priesthood last week for mistreating children and teenagers) ignited accusations that Homobaduality to blame for the resurgence of the crisis in the Church with regard to badual abuse.

Studies repeatedly indicate that there is no connection between being gay and mistreating boys. But equally important bishops report homobadual priests as if they were at the root of the problem and the right-wing media are attacking what they call "the homobadual subculture," the purple mafia. "or" the homobadual clique ".

Even Pope Francis has become more critical lately. He said that homobaduality was "fashionable", recommended not to accept men in the priesthood with this "rooted tendency" and reprimanded gay priests by asking them to be "fully responsible" , trying to never create a scandal"

This week, Francisco hosts a highly anticipated summit on badual abuse, with healings from around the world. The debate promises to affect not only the responsibility of the bishops on the issue, but also to homobaduality itself.

When in 2013 the pope pronounced this revolutionary question, "Who am I to judge a gay?"opened the closet door. Some prudent priests have been there.

But if the closet door was broken, the crisis of badual abuse now threatens to close immediately. The number of scapegoats pushed several priests to sink deeper into the closet..

"The vast majority of homobadual priests are not safe," said Father Bob Bussen of Park City, Utah, who came out after a Mbad for the LGBTQ community (bad, gay, bibadual, transgender and gay ). fags). Life in the closet is worse than being a scapegoat. This is not a closet: it's a cage.

A priest knows the closet even before he knows he is gay.

The code is taught early, usually at the seminar. Duo Numquam, semper three, says the warning: "Never 2, always 3". C & # 39; is to say: to move in the trios, not in pairs. Do not walk around or go to the cinema for two. Superiors warned for years: Any friendship between men is too dangerous, it can lead to something badual and end up in what they called "special friendship".

In the United States, the path to becoming a priest begins at university or later. But until 1980, the Church recruited boys of 14 or 15 years old: adolescents still at puberty. For many priests and bishops over the age of 50, this environment limited healthy badual development. Priests can not get married, so of emotional baduality had to do with abstinence and obedience.

Cures in the US They tend to recognize themselves as homobaduals in private life at a much older age than the national average, which is 15 years old. Many gay priests mention that they have been drawn into denial and confusion until they recognize each other after 30 years.

Gregory Greiten was 24 years old when he realized that he was gay and thought about throwing himself out of the window of his seminary article. He did not jump, but he confided his despair to a companion, who then came out of the closet. And it was a revelation: there were other gays who were preparing to be priests, only that no one was talking about it.

Gregory contacted a former teacher at the seminary who, in his opinion, was also gay.

"There will be a moment in your life where you will remember and you will love to be gaysaid this man, according to Gregory:

I thought: This guy is totally crazy.

And discovered the strange irony of the catholic closet: it's not a secret at all.

It's like an open closet, he says. It becomes a problem when it is made public or when we talk about it.

A little over a year ago, after a meeting with a group of gay priests, Gregory decided that it was time to end his silence. At a Sunday Mbad, before Christmas, in his suburban parish, he told his parishioners that he was gay and single. They applauded him standing up.

His story has become viral. A 90-year-old priest called him to tell him that he had spent all his life in the closet and that he hoped the future would be different.

For some ecclesiastical leaders, this effusive support was more threatening than their baduality, as Gregory Greiten had committed a mortal sin: opened the door to debate.

His archbishop, Jerome Listecki, of Milwaukee, said in a statement that he would have preferred that this information not be made public. And the tributary letters called it "satanic", "dirty gay" and "monster" who sodomized children.

Blaming gays for badual abuse will almost certainly be a central theme this week at the Vatican.

Instead of aiming to make bishops more accountable, this can transform again in a conviction for bads, gays and transbaduals within the Church Says John Coe, 63, a Kentucky deacon who left the closet last year.

Gregory would like to speak directly with the Pope:

─You hear my story about how did the church traumatize me to be gay Ask while talking to the air. This is not just the crisis of badual abuse. They traumatize and hurt another generation. We must stand up and say: more badual abuse, more badual trauma, more badual injury When it comes to baduality, we have to do things well.

By Elizabeth Dias. Translation: Abel Escudero Zadrayec.