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And if you want to understand the ferocity of the opposition to him on the Catholic right, this is the key. His most determined opponents are far-right closet cases, living in palaces, leading completely double lives, backed by the most vicious of reactionaries and bigots on the European and American far right

As a secular gay journalist, not hostile to the church, he walked into the Vatican and was simply staggered by its obvious gayness.

(Lepore hazards a guess that 80 percent of the Vatican’s population is gay.

as Martel probes deeper and deeper, one theme emerges very powerfully: “Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. The more vehemently opposed a cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something.”

it’s highly predictable that John Paul II’s pontificate, which launched a new war on homosexuals, turns out to be the gayest of them all — and the one most resistant to any inquiry into stories of sex abuse

Ratzinger, (the future Pope Benedict XVI) personally received notification of every claim of sex abuse in the church under John Paul II, ignoring most, and made the stigmatization and persecution of sane, adjusted non-abusive gay people across the globe his mission instead. There wasn’t a theological dissident he didn’t notice and punish, but barely a single pedophile he found reason to expose

Martel explains how two of John Paul II’s favorite cardinals — whose nicknames within the Vatican are Platinette (after a drag queen) and La Mongolfiera — set up an elaborate and elite prostitution service that continued through the papacy of Benedict XVI, and was financed from the Vatican coffers.

He notices simple things that some might call innuendo, but any gay man will instantly recognize, like the fabulous interiors of the gay cardinals’ palaces, always with their “assistants” or young “relative” on hand

take Martel’s interaction with the Swiss Guards, one of whom vents: “The harassment is so insistent that I said to myself that I was going straight home. Many of us are exasperated by the usually rather indiscreet advances of the cardinals and bishops.”

Or the prostitutes who keep elaborate records of their clients, and have already caused huge scandals in Italy.

Or a confessor-priest in Saint Peter’s who guides Martel into the Vatican with the words: “Welcome to Sodoma.”

If you want to find a figure who crystallizes all this hypocrisy in the narrative, it would be the late Colombian cardinal, Alfonso López Trujillo, tasked by John Paul II in the 1970s to rid Latin America of liberation theology, and then to launch a global crusade against homosexuality and the use of condoms

Trujillo’s own master of ceremonies on these trips tells us: “López Trujillo travelled with members of the paramilitary groups … He pointed out the priests who were carrying out social actions in the barrios and the poorer districts. The paramilitaries identified them and sometimes went back to murder them. Often they had to leave the region or the country.”

“López Trujillo beat prostitutes; that was his relationship with sexuality. He paid them, but they had to accept his blows in return. It always happened at the end, not during the physical act. He finished his sexual relations by beating them, out of pure sadism.”

if the Catholic right wants to weaponize the book, they’ll have to take on their own icons, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a whole range of their closest allies in the church.

what was Trujillo’s task in Rome? You guessed it: president of the Pontifical Council for the Family! This was the figure who spearheaded the war on gays in the 1980s and 1990s, who forbade the use of condoms, who spread the lie that condoms don’t protect anyone from HIV. And yet when he died, Benedict XVI gave the homily at the funeral mass.

It is even transphobic, I am now informed, for a gay man not to want to sleep with a trans man who has a vagina. In response to my recent column on the subject, I was told by Sue Hyde, a woman who is at the very heart of the LGBTQIA++ movement, to, yes, give it a try:

And the core thesis of the book — which is that it is the hypocrisy of the closet that is the real problem — is not one the right will be able easily to absorb.

Critically, Martel reaches the same conclusion I did recently — the omertà of the closet was a core reason for sex abuse

Gay priests felt unable to report pedophiles or abusers or hypocrites because they too could be outed by the abusers and forced out

When Trujillo was promoted to Rome, the reckless excesses went into overdrive. A Curia source tells Martel: “Everyone knew that he was homosexual. He lived with us, here, on the fourth floor of the Palazzo di San Calisto, in a 900-square-metre apartment, and he had several cars! Ferraris! He led a highly unusual life.”

There can be no meaningful reform until this closet is ended, and the whole sick, twisted syndrome is unwound.

only a radical change will help. Ending mandatory celibacy is no longer an option

Women need to be brought in to the full sacramental life of the church. Gay men need to be embraced not as some manifestation of “intrinsic moral evil” but as human beings made in the image of God

Francis is nudging the church toward this more humane and Christian future, but the more he does so, the more fervently this nest of self-haters and bigots will try to destroy him.

Everything I was taught growing up — to respect the priests and hierarchs, to trust them, to accept their moral authority — is in tatters.

the last drops of moral authority the Vatican might hope to have evaporate with this book. It is difficult to express the heartbroken rage so many of us in the pews now feel.

It tells you a lot about the LGBTQIA++ movement that it’s now lost Martina Navratilova.

A pioneering open lesbian who had an openly transgender coach in her glory years, who did more for gay visibility than any gay group ever has, is now being disowned by Athlete Ally, a New York–based organization that supports LGBT athletes

She argued in an op-ed that a trans woman who started out in life as male has an unfair advantage in sports over women who have never biologically male. For this, her comments have been condemned as “transphobic, based on a false understanding of science and data, and perpetuate dangerous myths that lead to the ongoing targeting of trans people.”

The truth, of course, is that the science is firmly behind Navratilova.

If you take this argument seriously — that biology is entirely a function of gender identity — then the whole notion of separate male and female sports events is in doubt

denying reality is stupid, can easily backfire, and will alienate countless otherwise sympathetic people

if the Equality Act were to pass — a priority for Nancy Pelosi — it would be illegal to bar a trans woman from competing against biological females, as it is already in many states.

There is no “gay lobby.” There is a “honeycomb of closets,” often insulated from each other, built on deception and self-hatred, that amounts to a system where protecting the image of the church became far more important than saving children from rapists.

Maybe. Or maybe I’ll sleep with whomever I want — you know, something we used to call sexual freedom.

Once upon a time, the religious right would tell me that I should sleep with women because I might find the right one and finally be happy. Now the intersectional left is telling me something almost exactly the same. What has happened to this movement? Where on earth has it gone?

Smollett was dumb and incompetent in his elaborate hoax. But he was smart about one thing. The most noble thing in our current culture is victimhood

Smollett aimed for the jackpot — physically attacked for being gay and black by Trump supporters

so all good liberals instinctively and with good intentions believed him, embraced him

His identity as gay and black rendered him instantly innocent, just as the Covington boys’ whiteness rendered them instantly guilty.

Booker, Harris, Pelosi: They’ll never apologize for their rush to judgment. This may not have been “precisely, factually, and semantically correct,” you see, but it was morally true.

Believe Jussie. Just believe. He may have made up an entire story, but “he’s not lying.”

Large churches like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God, which have provided an organizing base for the Christian right, are losing members.

The election outcome was also sobering news for Catholic bishops, who this year spoke out on politics more forcefully and more explicitly than ever before, some experts said. The bishops and Catholic conservative groups helped lead the fight against same-sex marriage in the four states where that issue was on the ballot. Nationwide, they undertook a campaign that accused Mr. Obama of undermining religious liberty, redoubling their efforts when a provision in the health care overhaul required most employers to provide coverage for contraception. Despite this, Mr. Obama retained the Catholic vote, 50 to 48 percent, according to exit polls, although his support slipped from four years ago.

solid majorities of Catholics supported same-sex marriage, said Dr. Jones, the pollster.

In Castile an influential party of magnates, led by Alfonso Carillo, archbishop of Toledo (who later reversed himself), and opposed to King Henry IV, supported the succession claims of the princess Isabella, the king’s half sister, against those of his daughter, Joan.

It needed a forged papal dispensation for the marriage, the blackmailing of Henry IV into (wrongly) denying the paternity of his daughter (Joan), and, finally, several years of bitter civil war before Ferdinand and Isabella defeated Joan’s Castilian supporters and her husband, Afonso V of Portugal.

Ferdinand and Isabella ruled jointly in both kingdoms and were known as the Catholic Monarchs

In Spain the Catholic Monarchs had no formal right of exequatur, but they and their Habsburg successors behaved very much as if they did.

In some ways, the Catholic Church in the United States has been in pseudo-schism with the Vatican for centuries

The essence of Christianity revolves around the life, death and Christian beliefs on the resurrection of Jesus. Christians believe God sent his son Jesus, the messiah, to save the world. They believe Jesus was crucified on a cross to offer the forgiveness of sins and was resurrected three days after his death before ascending to heaven.

Christians contend that Jesus will return to earth again in what’s known as the Second Coming.

The Holy Bible includes important scriptures that outline Jesus’s teachings, the lives and teachings of major prophets and disciples, and offer instructions for how Christians should live.

Both Christians and Jews follow the Old Testament of the Bible, but Christians also embrace the New Testament.The cross is a symbol of Christianity.The most important Christian holidays are Christmas (which celebrates the birth of Jesus) and Easter (which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus).

Most historians believe that Jesus was a real person who was born between 2 B.C. and 7 B.C.

According to the text, Jesus was born to a young Jewish virgin named Mary in the town of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem in modern-day Palestine.

he aimed to reform Judaism—not create a new religion.

Some of the main themes that Jesus taught, which Christians later embraced, include:Love God.Love your neighbor as yourself.Forgive others who have wronged you.Love your enemies.Ask God for forgiveness of your sins.Jesus is the Messiah and was given the authority to forgive others.Repentance of sins is essential.Don’t be hypocritical.Don’t judge others.The Kingdom of God is near. It’s not the rich and powerful—but the weak and poor—who will inherit this kingdom.

Many scholars believe Jesus died between 30 A.D. and 33 A.D.

Jesus was arrested, tried and condemned to death. Roman governor Pontius Pilate issued the order to kill Jesus after being pressured by Jewish leaders who alleged that Jesus was guilty of a variety of crimes, including blasphemy.

The Christian Bible is a collection of 66 books written by various authors. It’s divided into two parts: The Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Old Testament, which is also recognized by followers of Judaism, describes the history of the Jewish people, outlines specific laws to follow, details the lives of many prophets, and predicts the coming of the Messiah.

The New Testament was written after Jesus’s death. The first four books—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—are known as the “Gospels,” which means “good news.” These texts, composed sometime between 70 A.D. and 100 A.D., provide accounts of the life and death of Jesus.

According to the Bible, the first church organized itself 50 days after Jesus’s death on the Day of Pentecost—when the Holy Spirit was said to descend onto Jesus’s followers.

Early Christians considered it their calling to spread and teach the gospel. One of the most important missionaries was the apostle Paul, a former persecutor of Christians.

Many historians believe Christianity wouldn’t be as widespread without the work of Paul. In addition to preaching, Paul is thought to have written 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament.

Early Christians were persecuted for their faith by both Jewish and Roman leaders.

n 64 A.D., Emperor Nero blamed Christians for a fire that broke out in Rome. Many were brutally tortured and killed during this time.

tarting in 303 A.D., Christians faced the most severe persecutions to date under the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius. This became known as the Great Persecution.

When Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, religious tolerance shifted in the Roman Empire.

In 313 A.D., Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity with the Edict of Milan. He later tried to unify Christianity and resolve issues that divided the church by establishing the Nicene Creed.

When the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 A.D., differences emerged among Eastern and Western Christians.

In 1054 A.D., the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox church split into two groups

Between about 1095 A.D. and 1230 A.D., the Crusades, a series of holy wars, took place. In these battles, Christians fought against Islamic rulers and their Muslim soldiers to reclaim holy land in the city of Jerusalem.

In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther published 95 Theses—a text that criticized certain acts of the Pope and protested some of the practices and priorities of the Roman Catholic church.

Luther’s ideas triggered the Reformation—a movement that aimed to reform the Catholic church.

As a result, Protestantism was created, and different denominations of Christianity eventually began to form

Catholic, Protestant and (Eastern) Orthodox.

They also discovered that the Vatican hid these and other sensitive documents presumably to protect Pius’s image, a finding that will embarrass the Roman Catholic Church, which is still struggling with its coverup of clerical sexual abuse.

“If Pius XII comes out of this study of the sources looking better, that’s wonderful. If he comes out looking worse, we have to accept that, too.”

Pius XII, who headed the Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958 and is now a candidate for canonization, was the most controversial pontiff of the 20th century. His failure to denounce the Holocaust publicly earned him the title of “Hitler’s pope,” and critics have for decades asked for his wartime archives to be opened for scrutiny.

The pope’s defenders have long argued he could not speak out more clearly for fear of a Nazi backlash, and they cite his decision to hide Jews at the Vatican and in churches and monasteries as proof of his good deeds.

The chain of events goes back to Sept. 27, 1942, when a U.S. diplomat gave the Vatican a secret report on the mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. It said about 100,000 had been massacred in and around Warsaw and added that an additional 50,000 were killed in Lviv in German-occupied Ukraine.

The archive included a note confirming that Pius read the American report. It also had two letters to the Vatican independently corroborating the reports of massacres in Warsaw and Lviv, according to the researchers.

The research team also found three small photographs showing emaciated concentration camp inmates and corpses thrown into a mass grave. A Jewish informer had given them to the Vatican ambassador, or nuncio, in neutral Switzerland to send to the Vatican, and the Holy See confirmed reception of them in a letter two weeks later.

It has long been known that the Catholic Church — possibly with covert U.S. assistance — helped ex-Nazis, like the Holocaust bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann, concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele or Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, flee to South America. These men were anti-communists, and Rome and Washington considered communism their enemy.

Other questions Wolf wants to research are Pius’s relations with U.S. political and intelligence networks during and after the war, his role in promoting European unity, and his thoughts about allying with Muslims in a campaign against communism.

Answers to these and other questions could also influence a drive by conservative Catholics to have Pius declared a saint.

“I would have to say Tolkien,” Vance said. “I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up.” He added of Tolkien’s colleague: “Big fan of C.S. Lewis — really sort of like that era of English writers. I think they were really interesting. They were grappling, in part because of World War II, with just very big problems.”

In the books, the future of civilization rests on the search and eventual destruction of The One Ring. While Frodo and Gollum jostle over the singular ring, true fans know there are a total of 20 rings of power. Vance is apparently among those ranks, as the venture capital firm he founded in 2019 is named Narya, named after one of those other rings that Gandalf wears. Vance’s mentor Peter Thiel similarly named his company Palantir after the crystal ball used by Saruman in Lord of the Rings, and Vance has invested in the defense startup Anduril, named after Aragorn’s sword.

“By the time of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Narya has been entrusted to Gandalf to resist the corrupting influence of evil, preserve the world from decay, and give strength to its wielder,”

“Gandalf, unlike the other great powers in Lord of the Rings, cared for the hobbits and other lowly people of Middle-Earth, and so it is unsurprising that Vance would see himself as a kind of Gandalf, caring for the forgotten people of his hometown, keeping a watchful eye on them against the corrupting effects of the world.”

Luke Burgis, author of a book about René Girard (another of Vance’s intellectual heroes) and Catholic University of America professor, said he suspects “Vance’s appreciation of Tolkien is not unrelated to his conversion to Catholicism in 2019. Of the many ways that Tolkien’s work exemplifies the Catholic imagination, one is the relationship between the visible and the invisible. I think it’s fair to say that Vance believes there is real spiritual evil in this world, and it can become embodied in rites and rituals.” (At a closed-door speech in September 2021, Vance said, “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society.)

Vance likely took away from Tolkien “an apocalyptic frame of mind” Burgis told me, a final and all-encompassing battle between good and evil

The books have a definite anti-war streak. In the Two Towers, the second of the trilogy, Tolkien wrote: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

Vance has said his own time in the Marines deployed in Iraq was formative to his isolationist, dovish approach to foreign policy. “I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to,” Vance once recounted. “[I saw] that promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.”

But his fandom also is in tension with some of Tolkien’s ideas about how nation-states should approach the outside world. The books are, in many ways, anti-isolationist. Frodo wants to ignore the ill tidings and stay home but eventually realizes that the Shire isn’t untouched by troubles elsewhere (like, say, NATO being pulled into defending Ukraine from Sauron Putin). In the end, Rohan, Gondor, the elves, ents and dwarves, all must band together and end their petty nationalist squabbles. Their lives are, they realize, interconnected.

Vance’s love of Lord of the Rings is of a piece with rightward nationalists abroad. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni used to cosplay as a hobbit. “I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” she has said, though unlike Vance she has supported aid to Ukraine.

Rick Santorum, the former senator and two-time GOP presidential candidate, is a fellow Tolkien-pilled Catholic but he has different takeaways from Vance.

“I’m a huge Tolkien fan,” he continued. “I’m also someone who believes that the message of Tolkien is that evil must be confronted. And so the idea is that well, we can wait until it comes to the Shire, but that is not a very good game plan. You gotta go to Mordor.”

All of this points to intellectual and spiritual tensions Vance still seems to be working out. “He’s been in office a year and a half. He’s never been greatly involved in politics before this,” Santorum said. “I suspect that this is one of the reasons Trump may have picked him: JD is a smart guy but is still a work in progress.”

Those close to Vance say he has been undergoing an awakening since he converted to Catholicism in 2019.

Conservative writer Rod Dreher, who Vance invited to his initiation to the faith in 2019 and was present for his first communion, told me that Vance “is thinking broadly about how all must join in the great struggle against darkness — there is no avoiding the struggle — and how God can use the humble and the lowborn to do great things.”

“Think about it: Who would have imagined that sad, scared little Ohio boy living in a wreck of a family would have come through it all, and risen to the gates of supreme political power? What might God be doing with him? J.D. Vance might be Frodo of the Hollers, a veritable hillbilly hobbit.”

they're a sign of a broad acceptance and appreciation of Jewish culture. Outside of New York City, Jews are generally rare in terms of numbers. Yet in spite of this, they've become seen as normal—and popular—by the population at large.

Why, despite the anti-Semitism that still exists in the United States, are Americans mostly down with the Jews?

There's generalized cultural cachet, which is a little hard to pin down, but from doting articles about deli food in The New York Times to Adam Sandler's famous ode to Hanukkah, staples of Jewish culture have become ubiquitous and adored. 

white evangelicals rated the faith more highly than respondents from other religions; they were more enthusiastic about Jews than anyone besides Jews themselves. This is not a coincidence; evangelicals have typically been strong supporters of Jews and Zionism, citing the group's status as God's "chosen people" in the Bible and the prophesied future of Israel as the site of Jesus's second coming. 

Buddhists and Hindus were given decidedly chillier ratings than their Jewish brethren, and Muslims ranked the lowest out of all religious groups, including the ever-despised atheists. People of these faiths are more likely to be first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants; they haven't been around as long as Jews. 

63" out of 100 was the mean rating for the most popular group in the survey (and I'll say it again, just because it brings me pleasure: that would be the Jews). Americans from all groups, it seems, feel pretty lukewarm about anyone who isn't like them.

But not until the Spanish conquest of Peru was the conquest of the Aztecs matched in scope by the victory over the Inca empire in 1532.

A second (and permanent) settlement was established in 1580 by Juan de Garay, who arrived by sailing down the Paraná River from Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay). He dubbed the settlement "Santísima Trinidad" and its port became "Puerto de Santa María de los Buenos Aires." The city came to be the head of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata and in 1776 elevated to be the capital of the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

Spain's administration of its colonies in the Americas was divided into the Viceroyalty of New Spain 1535 (capital, México City), and the Viceroyalty of Peru 1542 (capital, Lima). In the 18th century the additional Viceroyalty of New Granada 1717 (capital, Bogotá), and Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata 1776 (capital, Buenos Aires) were established from portions of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

During the Napoleonic Peninsular War in Europe between France and Spain, assemblies called juntas were established to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII of Spain

The Libertadores (Spanish and Portuguese for "Liberators") were the principal leaders of the Spanish American wars of independence. They were predominantly criollos (Americas-born people of European ancestry, mostly Spanish or Portuguese), bourgeois and influenced by liberalism and in some cases with military training in the mother country.

These began a movement for colonial independence that spread to Spain's other colonies in the Americas. The ideas from the French and the American Revolution influenced the efforts. All of the colonies, except Cuba and Puerto Rico, attained independence by the 1820s

In 1898, the United States won victory in the Spanish–American War from Spain, ending the Spanish colonial era

It has been estimated that in the 16th century about 240,000 Spaniards emigrated to the Americas, and in the 17th century about 500,000, predominantly to Mexico and Peru.

The population of the Native Amerindian population in Mexico declined by an estimated 90% (reduced to 1–2.5 million people) by the early 17th century. In Peru the indigenous Amerindian pre-contact population of around 6.5 million declined to 1 million by the early 17th century.[citation needed] The overwhelming cause of decline in both Mexico and Peru was infectious diseases.

The Spaniards were committed, by Royal decree, to convert their New World indigenous subjects to Catholicism. However, often initial efforts were questionably successful, as the indigenous people added Catholicism into their longstanding traditional ceremonies and beliefs. The many native expressions, forms, practices, and items of art could be considered idolatry and prohibited or destroyed by Spanish missionaries, military and civilians. This included religious items, sculptures and jewelry made of gold or silver, which were melted down before shipment to Spain.