VATICAN:The Vatican last weekend confirmed it has suspended a senior official in the Congregation for the Clergy, namely Msgr Tommaso Stenico, after an Italian TV programme, using a hidden camera, had recorded him making advances to a young man and asserting gay sex was not sinful.
In an unusual move, the Vatican's senior spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, on Saturday confirmed the suspension of Msgr Stenico, adding: "He [Msgr Stenico] has been suspended from his position and his office because of behaviour that is incompatible with priestly service and with the Holy See."
The TV programme in question, Exit, transmitted by La7, features an undercover investigation into homosexual behaviour by priests. Two men, who claim to be priests, talk candidly about their homosexual orientation, with both denying homosexuality is a sin, and one of them suggesting the Church's teaching is total hypocrisy.
The programme claims many gay priests use the internet to chat and set up meetings with other gays, while Rome daily La Reppublica yesterday indicated www.venerabilis.tk as a site where gay priests meet.
In the final sequence of the programme, the undercover reporter arranges a meeting with a monsignor in the Vatican. The reporter enters a Vatican office, later identified as that of Msgr Stenico, and sits down on a couch.
At first the two men talk about sexual morality, with the monsignor saying that, for him, homosexuality is not a sin. At a certain point, the monsignor sits down beside the "reporter" and says to him: "You are nice, very, very nice." When the young man points out that, in the eyes of God, the monsignor is "about to commit a sin", the monsignor replies he does not consider himself a sinner.
The "encounter" between the two men ends there, with the monsignor accompanying his guest to the lift and telling him to "say nothing to nobody" if he was stopped.
In a statement to La Repubblica yesterday, Msgr Stenico claimed he had been a victim of entrapment, saying: "For work purposes, I came in contact with a young man who wanted to talk to me about his problems. He came to my office and filmed me secretly, for whatever purpose. But I am not and never have been gay." Msgr Stenico's case will now be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body that monitors doctrinal orthodoxy which was formerly headed by Pope Benedict XVI.