Shamefully shameless…
Vatican Newspaper Publishes
Bishop’s Foreword to Way of the Cross of a Gay Boy
‘Bp.’ Francesco Savino and the Vatican newspaper endorse the Way of the Cross of a Gay Boy…
L’Osservatore Romano, Italian for The Roman Observer, is the official newspaper of the Vatican. It used to be, of course, a journal of pristine orthodoxy long time ago, but now it has been a Modernist rag for decades. Its current editor-in-chief, appointed by ‘Pope’ Francis in 2018, is Andrea Monda of ‘mercy-for-Judas’ infamy.
On Mar. 25 of this year, the daily Italian edition of the paper printed a scandalous piece written by an Italian Novus Ordo bishop that didn’t get much attention at the time, perhaps because it was Holy Week. We’ve decided to pick up the story now so it doesn’t get completely unnoticed.
An Italian law professor by the name of Luigi Testa published a book entitled Via Crucis di un Ragazzo Gay (“Way of the Cross of a Gay Boy”). The 64-page work was released by the publishing house Castelvecchi on Mar. 15, 2024, two weeks before Good Friday. It contains a foreword by ‘Bishop’ Francesco Savino (b. 1954) and an afterword by ‘Fr.’ Sergio Massironi.
Savino is the diocesan ordinary of Cassano all’Jonio, Calabria. Since May 25, 2022, he has also been the vice-president of the Italian episcopal conference. Massironi is part of the so-called Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, though apparently helping people overcome unnatural sexual tendencies is not part of that oh-so ‘integral’ development.
The author, Luigi Testa, “teaches Comparative Public Law at the University of Insubria and Public Law at Bocconi University”, according to the publisher. In this video dated Oct. 27, 2021, he appears to be wearing a wedding band.
The official book description is as follows:
Christ’s passion remains, for believers and non-believers alike, the most authentic and authoritative way in which the radical teaching of shared and universal love is realized every day. But the life of men is a tormented journey, and there arises then the need to allow oneself to be told again about that passion of love, felt especially by those who perceive on themselves gazes not of love but of hatred, not of salvation but of condemnation. This is the perspective of Luigi Testa, who places himself before the passion of the Lord, coming out of anonymity and stereotyped devotional formulas, bringing into meditation what it means to be homosexual in our time.
In other words, the reflections are all about the poor victim sodomite, who is suffering a ‘passion’ of his own! The Sacred Passion of Our Blessed Lord is hijacked to boost acceptance of the ‘gay lifestyle’, since to oppose it would mean to be lacking in “shared and universal love” and to seek to prefer condemnation to salvation! Talk about a perversion of the truth!
Bad enough as this is, a Novus Ordo bishop thought he had to contribute a preface to the book. To make matters worse, the Vatican newspaper decided to publish it!
The episcopal foreword was printed on page 6 of the Mar. 25, 2024 edition of L’Osservatore Romano under the title Sguardo all’Invisibilità (“A Look at Invisibility”). It has also been published on the paper’s web site, though it is mercifully kept behind a paywall:
- Sguardo all’Invisibilità (‘Bp.’ Francesco Savino)
It seems that the only English-speaking Novus Ordo news site that picked up this story at the time was Catholic Culture, which gives a good summary and overview of the matter:
In his text, ‘Bishop’ Savino points out that he is struck by the title of the book: Via Crucis of a Gay Boy. He says that it is “direct” and “disruptive” and unites the traditional devotion with what churches “have too long marginalized and crucified”. And there we have a preview of what to expect: The poor ‘crucified’ sodomite, he is just so Christ-like!
Savino happily brings the Vatican’s perpetual Synods into the picture when he says:
The synodal reflection on the family [2014/15], crowned by the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia [2016] of Pope Francis, pushed the Church to emerge more courageously from itself and its own customs, to embrace reality: the flesh and blood of lives called to the joy of love.
(Francesco Savino, “Sguardo all’Invisibilità”, L’Osservatore Romano, Mar. 25, 2024; translation from Catholic Culture.)
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see what is going on here. The traditional Catholic doctrine and practice are relegated to the status of mere outdated “customs”, and they are contrasted with “reality” we must now “courageously” accept: “the flesh and blood of lives called to the joy of love”! In other words, not just acceptance of “shameful affections” (Rom 1:26) but also of the wicked carnal deeds that fulfill those depraved desires! And all of this under the guise of “love” and “salvation”, even — oh, the blasphemy! — of imitating Our Lord!
But Savino has more to say:
This book leads us to taste the faith of those whom the Church has often dismissed as public sinners, denied sacraments, ministries and above all voice, name, visibility. In how many pronouncements, in how many communities, in how many homes have we made the children loved by God feel wrong [backwards, mistaken, in the wrong — sbagliati]?
This is just rhetoric meant to advance the sodomite cause.
The fact is that no one is condemned, denied the sacraments, or excluded from the Church simply for experiencing same-sex attraction. People who find themselves drawn to members of the same sex are not evil because of it. Sin is always in the will, and where there is no consent to evil, no will to do or feel anything contrary to God’s Law, there is no sin. In other words, simply experiencing a disordered emotion or attraction is not sinful, as long as this is not willed, not desired, not approved of.
However, we see that this is not what is meant in the case before us, because we are talking not about the issue of Catholics (Novus Ordos) privately struggling with certain sins but of those who make their temptations and disordered affections into their very identity and associate themselves with them in public, some even to the point of flaunting them. Savino’s comments leave no doubt that that’s what he’s referring to, and the same goes for someone who publishes a book specifically as a “gay boy”.
Towards the end of his scandalous foreword, ‘Bp.’ Savino doubles down:
…by revealing himself with his name and surname, [Luigi Testa] emerges as a luminous witness for the Church of our time and brings to light the work of God who overcomes human slowness and prejudices, all too human. Yes, dear readers: God surpasses us on every side, he is newer than any trend or doctrine, he gives us this time of ours as kairos [favorable moment in time] in which to open ourselves to his life.
Here we see the terrible potential Novus Ordo theology has to pervert the Catholic Faith. The starting point from which it originates is a false concept of revelation. For these strange post-Catholics, Divine Revelation is not a fixed deposit communicated by God to His Apostles which is passed on and explicated throughout the centuries, thus becoming ever clearer while always retaining the same substantial meaning.
Rather, for them, dogma continually evolves in line with human experience and scientific discovery. For them, the ‘lived human experience’ is itself a locus theologicus, that is, a “place” or source of continual revelation. At the same time, the clear testimony of Sacred Scripture and Tradition is dismantled by means of flawed biblical criticism that ultimately destroys all revealed truth.
Hence the Vatican II religion has now arrived at blather-synods, paradigm shifts, and the ‘god of surprises’, with endless possibilites: homo couple blessings, ‘communion’ for public bigamists, false religions as ‘willed by God’, human dignity as ‘infinite’, a branding of the death penalty as “contrary to the Gospel”, and so on. Indeed, now a sodomite is a quasi-prophet witnessing to the (supposed) truth of God against the Church’s received Apostolic Faith!
This is directly contrary, of course, to the traditional Roman Catholic doctrine. For example, Pope St. Pius X condemned the following propositions as Modernist errors:
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.
23. Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
(CONDEMNED by Pope Pius X, Decree Lamentabili Sane)
Decades earlier, the First Vatican Council had made clear that “that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding” (Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Chapter 4).
And in 1950, Pope Pius XII condemned “a certain historicism, which attributing value only to the events of man’s life, overthrows the foundation of all truth and absolute law both on the level of philosophical speculations and especially to Christian dogmas” (Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 7).
Nevertheless, the intrepid ‘Bp.’ Savino has the frightful boldness to consign true Divine Revelation about man — specifically, concerning human sexuality — to the status of “human slowness and prejudices”!
That is, of course, the exact opposite of the reality, for it is the Modernist perversion of the Faith that is the man-made tradition, not that which was handed down from time immemorial. The holy words Christ once spoke to the Pharisees can also be applied to today’s Modernists: “Well do you make void the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition” (Mk 7:9).
By the way: The report by Catholic Culture notes that along with this foreword “the Vatican newspaper’s website published a photograph of two shirtless men alongside another man in a T-shirt who is carrying a cross. A fuller version of the photograph was published in the print edition”.
That is accurate, but we can supply some additional information. As noted in the Osservatore Romano print edition on page 6, it is a detail shot taken from the work Passion that is installed in the back of ‘St.’ John XXIII Church at Bergamo hospital. That travesty of a church, dedicated in 2014, is incredibly hideous in every way, but that’s just par for the course.
The creators of this Passion, in which shirtless men abound, are the so-called Ferrario Freres, two men creating all kinds of questionable ‘art’, including works that appear disturbing, demented, indecent, even blasphemous. We won’t link to their social media pages, but their page on the Passion project at John XXIII Church can be accessed here.
Page 6 of the Osservatore Romano print edition of Mar. 25, 2024
We should not fail to understand that ‘Pope’ Francis has continually reinforced the popular idea that there is a ‘homosexual identity’. We recall how a few years back he committed an unspeakable blasphemy when he told Juan Carlos Cruz, who as a victim of sexual abuse has been engaging in habitual sodomy as an adult, “God made you like that”! What a disgusting, damnable lie!
The very notion of being homosexual, being gay, as it is called, is flawed. Sexual orientation is a made-up concept that does not reflect any reality. While it is clear that there can be an experience of sexual attraction between members of the same sex, all sexuality is, by its very nature, oriented towards the other sex. That is how God made it, and He did so for the primary purpose of procreation: “And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it…” (Gen 1:27-28).
Although there are many different kinds of sins against purity, any sexual act that defeats this procreative purpose is among the most heinous: “Worst among the sins of impurity, as such, are crimes of unnatural lust, for they exercise the sexual act, not only illicitly, but also in a manner that defeats its purpose of reproduction” (Rev. John A. McHugh & Rev. Charles J. Callan, Moral Theology, vol. 2 [New York, NY: Joseph F. Wagner, 1958], n. 2534; available online here.)
The very fact that some human beings have unnatural sexual desires does not mean they are allowed to indulge in them. All sins and sinful inclinations have their root in original sin. Concupiscence, which is the continual inclination to do what is wrong, is one of the effects of original sin, and it is not wiped out by baptism. All of us must continually struggle to overcome concupiscence, to subdue our unreasoning passions: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mk 14:38). Hence the need for penance, mortification, prayer, and good works, all made fruitful and meritorious by the help of God’s grace: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mt 16:24); “Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light” (Mt 11:29-30).
Thus Pope St. Pius X reminded us that Jesus Christ “did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross” (Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique).
The royal way of the cross! There it is again; we have come full circle. That is the Via Crucis, the only true Way of the Cross we must tread, and apart from it, no salvation is possible: “But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Mt 24:13); “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us” (2 Tim 2:12).
Apparently, long gone are the days when Catholics meditated on Christ’s Passion during the Stations of the Cross — now it is much more in vogue to reflect on the sufferings of some (real or imagined) oppressed victim group or minority:
- The Passion of Man: Francis’ Anthropocentric Stations of the Cross (2019)
- Way of the Cross in the Vatican: ‘Dear Jesus, only You know how hard it is to Wake Up every Morning after Wetting the Bed’ (2021)
Speaking of forewords and problematic books, here is one last ‘tidbit’.
The proud alphabet soup activist ‘Fr.’ James Martin — whom we disaffectionately call ‘Hellboy’ on this site, in the interests of promoting greater descriptive accuracy — got ‘Pope’ Francis to write the foreword to the Italian edition of his latest book, Come Forth, “about the raising of Lazarus, which the heretical Jesuit priest has used to promote LGBT ideology and urge homosexuals to ‘come out’ and ‘embrace’ their disordered tendencies”:
- Pope Francis writes preface to pro-LGBT Fr. James Martin’s latest book (Life Site)
- Pope writes preface for book by LGBT-rights activist Fr James Martin (Catholic Herald)
- Full text: Pope Francis’ preface to Father James Martin’s book on Lazarus (America)
One thing is clear: Under ‘Pope’ Francis, the Vatican is doing its darndest to push the practical acceptance of sodomy and other sexual aberrations in every way possible.
Image sources: composite with elements from castelvecchieditore.com and diocesicassanoalloionio.it and osservatoreromano.va / osservatoreromano.va
Licenses: fair use / fair use
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