Vatican City

Pope Leo XIV had a relatively quiet first 11 months on the Chair of St. Peter. Then Mt. Trump erupted in April, with the voluble and volatile POTUS accusing the Chicago-born pontiff of everything from squishiness on crime to squishiness on Iranian nukes. The most absurd presidential claim was that, were it not for Trump, Robert Francis Prevost would not be Pope. The truth of the matter is that, had Cardinal Prevost been primarily thought of as an American papabile a year ago, he would never have been elected, Latin American opposition to a gringo Pope being one of the immutable human dynamics of a papal conclave. Twenty years of missionary work in Peru, and broad experience of the world church (thanks to two terms as prior general of the Order of St.

Pope Francis this week apologized for decrying the "frociaggine" — or "faggotry" — in the Vatican and in Catholic seminaries for the second time in a matter of weeks. On Tuesday in a private meeting, Francis mentioned the "air of faggotry" in the Vatican, which followed his May 20 comment that "nella chiesa c'è troppa aria di frociaggine" — "in our Church there is too much of an air of faggotry." The Spectator reached out to Frédéric Martel, an anchor at Radio France, a professor at the ZHdK University in Zurich and the author of twelve books, including In the Closet of the Vatican, his explosive New York Times bestseller about the widespread hypocritical homosexual behavior rife in the higher echelons of the Church.