The Vatican Wants to Dig Up the Remains of a Gay Priest

by Todd A. Heywood · 2010-05-12 09:30:00 UTC
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Cardinal NewmanWe know that many within the institutional Catholic Church are busy erroneously blaming its ongoing pedophile scandal on gay clergy in its rank. And we know that many within the institutional Church are not exactly friendly to the LGBT community.

But this marks a new low.

The Vatican is in the process of Canonizing Cardinal John Henry Newman. Newman has been dead since 1890 — that's 120 years for those as poor at math as I am. And as part of the process, the Cardinal's body has been ordered exhumed, moved to a new location and reburied.

The hitch? As Peter Tachell reported in September 2008, despite the late Cardinal's written instructions that he forever be entombed with his life partner, Father Ambrose St John, St John's remains shall remain where they're at now, and not transported with Cardinal Newman's.

The Cardinal is also causing a ruckus between liberal and conservative adherents of the Church. Conservatives, including Pope Benedict XVI, adore Newman because of his adherence to the Latin mass, papal supremacy and, of course, his support for celibacy and opposition to birth control.

Liberal reformers point at Newman as a new hero for them because he held conscience before the Pope, and because of his sexuality.

And what of this sexuality? How do we know that Cardinal Newman and Father St John were lovers?

“From the first he loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable,” The Times reports the Cardinal wrote of St John. It goes on to quote him writing, “As far as this world was concerned, I was his first and last ... he was my earthly light.”

And the Church thinks these two were celibate? Really?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Todd A. Heywood is an investigative reporter based in Lansing, Michigan. He works for the American Independent News Network. He is HIV-positive and openly gay.
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