"In one call, Balducci Ehiem asks if he has' spoken to the seminary." Meanwhile, Ehiem replied: 'Perhaps you are at Mass,' "said Kennedy. The transcripts suggest that Ehiem got at least ten contacts to Balducci, including several models and a rugby player. The conversations leaked to the press include a dialogue between the two men. "According to reports, Thomas Ehiem-a showgirl Vatican aged 29, allegedly would have been an intermediary who then sought out young men who would argue with Angelo Balducci homosexual encounters," said our correspondent.Īccording to Kennedy, Balducci is a 'Gentleman of His Holiness', ie, a close aide to the pope when he meets with important visitors. "The Vatican's gay sex scandal, as some newspapers call it, captures headlines in Italy," the BBC correspondent in Rome, Duncan Kennedy.
Peter were expelled from their posts after their names appeared on transcripts of telephone conversations intercepted by police, who in turn were published by an Italian newspaper.Ī Vatican spokesman told the BBC that the Pope is informed of the case. Benedict resigned in 2013.Two employees of the Vatican were removed from their posts after being involved in a homosexual prostitution ring, in what constitutes a new scandal that splashes to the Holy See.Īn aide to Pope Benedict XVI and a member of a choir of the Basilica of St. Vatican insiders have said that even after he retired, Sodano, who continued to live in the Vatican, exercised significant influence in the careers of Vatican officials for the remainder of Benedict's pontificate. Sodano was Vatican ambassador in Chile between 1977-1988. Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of clergy sexual abuse in his native Chile and now a member of a Vatican commission on preventing sexual abuse, wrote on Twitter that Sodano was "a man who inflicted so much damage on so many people and covered up years of abuse in Chile and the world". He served in Vatican embassies in Ecuador, Uruguay, Chile before being called back to the Vatican for senior administrative roles, including the number two spot. Ordained a priest in 1950, Sodano joined the diplomatic service several years later. In 2010, victims of clergy sexual abuse condemned Sodano for saying at a public Easter address that abuse was mostly "petty gossip". He died in 2003 never admitting guilt or facing charges. Groer stepped down as archbishop of Vienna in 1995 after allegations that he had sexually abused young seminarians in the past. In 2010, four years after Pope Benedict replaced Sodano as secretary of state, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna accused Sodano of having blocked a full-scale investigation of former Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer. Maciel, a conservative seen as a bulwark against liberalism in the Church, was known to have made generous financial gifts to the Vatican. Sodano several times denied allegations that he was aware of Maciel's double life and that he had covered up for him.
The cult-like Legion of Christ order, whose rules forbade criticizing its founder or questioning his motives, later acknowledged that Maciel, who died in 2008, lived a double life as a paedophile, womanizer and drug addict.
In a series of exposes in the National Catholic Reporter in 2010, author Jason Berry, a leading expert on the Church's sex abuse crisis, wrote how Sodano blocked the Vatican from investigating Father Marcial Maciel, disgraced founder of the Legion of Christ religious order.Īfter John Paul's death, Pope Benedict ramped up investigations of Maciel and removed him in 2006, when the Vatican acknowledged that allegations it had been brushed aside for decades were true.