Martel, a gay French journalist and researcher who has written many books on gay themes, has no issue with Catholic clergy having an active sex life or breaking church rules. Like Francis, it is the hypocrisy he can’t abide.

Pope Francis at the canonisation of Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II in April 2014 (photograph by Jeffrey Bruno/Wikimedia Commons)

This is a remarkable book, the fruit apparently of four years of investigation in more than thirty countries, involving 1,500 interviews with forty-one cardinals, fifty-two bishops, forty-five nuncios (Vatican ambassadors), eleven Swiss Guards, and more than two hundred priests and seminarians, aided by some eighty local translators and journalists.

An important caveat: although much of the material is on the public record, and Martel has tapes of conversations, the reader still has to take much on trust, something of a challenge given Martel’s tabloid approach. And most of the prelates he names – dozens – are dead or long retired; those still serving are given pseudonyms or nicknames. Of course, not every gay priest is promiscuous. Many have long-term, live-in partners, often a secretary or a ‘relative’, and some resist temptation entirely. Martel identifies five types: the ‘mad virgin’ who has chosen religion to avoid temptations of the flesh; the ‘infernal husband’ who is the most repressed yet also obsessed; the ‘queen of hearts’ who is likely to be in a long-term monogamous relationship; the ‘Don Juan’ who makes passes at everyone, especially seminarians and Swiss Guards; and ‘La Mongolfiera’, the user of prostitution networks.

I began this book expecting to be mildly entertained by a gossipy insider account of hypocrisy and sexual misbehaviour inside the Vatican, and the 570 pages are crammed with that. But I doubt anyone who believes much or most of Martel’s account – and I am persuaded it is mostly true – could finish it and not be enraged and disgusted by the hypocrisy, the sense of entitlement of so many prelates, the abuse of power, and the lack of concern for others.

One theme that rings true is Martel’s answer to the question that has mystified, repelled, and offended so many Catholics and others: why is the Vatican so secretive, so obstructive, and so slow to act on clergy sexual abuse and paedophilia? His explanation is the most shocking imaginable: they do nothing for fear that their own double lives will be exposed.

‘Why do the cardinals say nothing? Why do they all close their eyes? Why was Pope Benedict XVI, who knew about many sexual scandals, never brought to justice? Why did Cardinal Bertone [Secretary of State, the Vatican Prime Minister], ruined by the attacks of Angelo Sodano [his predecessor], not bring out the files that he had about his enemy? Talking about others means that they may talk about you. That is the key to the omertà.’ Prelates protect paedophiles not because they are paedophiles themselves – most are not – but to avoid discovery of their own homosexuality.

While Martel does not suggest that John Paul II or Benedict XVI were sexually active themselves – rather, they were ‘homophilic’ – their inner circles were at once the most homophobic yet homosexual papal entourages in history, which would be inconceivable without papal toleration. In John Paul II’s circle there were so many active homosexuals – ‘unimaginable levels of venality and corruption. Even around the holy father there was a veritable ring of lust,’ a Curia priest tells Martel.

John Paul II, so heroic in standing against communism, surrounded himself with ‘plotters, thugs, and a majority of closeted homosexuals’ who crusaded against gays in public. When it comes to child sexual abuse among the clergy, this newly canonised saint was contemptible. First, he said it didn’t exist, then that it was a media beat-up, and then that it was purely an Anglophone problem. Such meagre compassion as he mustered was reserved for the offenders. Two top-level cardinals under John Paul II – nicknamed ‘Platinette’ after an Italian drag queen and ‘La Mongolfiera’ after the hot-air balloon inventor – regularly hosted foursomes with male prostitutes, while, at the second level of the papal inner ring, three bishops procured for cardinals.

Benedict’s was said to be ‘the gayest pontificate in history’, ‘fifty shades of gay’. No pope has been so anti-gay, and no pope has so impotently witnessed such social momentum in favour of gay rights. By fighting the wrong battle – against homosexuality rather than paedophilia – Benedict lost the moral campaign. He was damaged by the Vatileaks of 2012, and horrified by the 300-page report by three bishops who investigated the leaks. But what really crushed his spirit, according to Martel, was a visit to Cuba where he was overwhelmed by the amount of sexual abuse and homosexual practice. ‘Intransigent and shy, he had spent his whole life trying to thwart evil, and here he was literally surrounded, encircled by homosexual priests and cases of paedophilia.’ He decided to resign barely a week after his return, though he took six months to announce it.

Martel details numerous case studies. Let’s mention three. First is Angelo Sodano, long John Paul II’s secretary of state, an eminence noir ‘with a whiff of sulphur’ whose past was blacker than his cassock. Sodano was nuncio in Pinochet’s Chile, where he lived in ostentatious luxury, fervently supported the dictator, and probably even betrayed left-wing priests to the security forces. As John Paul II faded, Sodano became de facto pope. Still alive at ninety-one, he has taken over the luxurious penthouse at the Ethiopian College, to the Africans’ chagrin, and refuses to leave.

Marcial Maciel of Mexico, Martel says, is probably the most diabolical figure the Catholic Church has raised over the past fifty years. Founder of the Legion of Christ, he carried out a sustained program of violence against at least two hundred victims – dozens of children, whom he liked blond and blue-eyed, and countless seminarians. Maciel was protected for decades by John Paul II and Sodano because he brought in millions of dollars and thousands of seminarians fanatically devoted to the pope.

Colombia’s Cardinal Trujillo, mentioned above, won Vatican attention fighting liberation theology and became president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. He also adored ostentation, demanding to be met on episcopal visits with a red carpet and a children’s choir (with freshly cut hair, no blacks). If some church valuable won his admiration, he would simply take it home. Long associated with drug traffickers and paramilitaries, he is allegedly responsible for the deaths of dozens of progressive priests and bishops. He travelled the world arguing against using condoms to protect against AIDS, but may have died of AIDS himself in 2008. He had an apartment in Colombia to which he took a procession of male prostitutes and seminarians.

George Pell at a redemptoris mater seminary in Sydney in 2012 (photograph by Kerry Myers/Flickr)

What of Australia’s George Pell, recently sentenced to six years in prison on five counts of sexual abuse against choir boys in 1996–97? At the time of writing, Martel was aware of the trial but not of any details or that Pell would become the highest-ranking Catholic convicted of such charges. Naturally, as soon as the book arrived I went to the index to see if Pell is in the book. He is indeed, but not in the index: there isn’t one – a serious failure in such an ambitious book.

Martel identifies Pell as a leader of the conservative faction at the Vatican, which is not as reactionary as the traditionalists led by Cardinal Raymond Burke because it accepts the reforming Vatican II council of the 1960s. Pell is also prominent in a long list of cardinals who frustrate Pope Francis with their inflexibility and homophobia.

Pell, known in the Vatican as ‘Pell Pot’, has the courage to speak on the record and answers Martel professionally, concisely and humorously. ‘He is efficient; he knows his files and his music.’ Pell acknowledges differences with Francis, but what matters is that the church is united on faith and morals; otherwise ‘let a hundred flowers blossom’ – not an attitude for which he was noted in Australia. But Pell concedes that he thinks Francis’s emphasis on ‘peripheries’ and his empathy for homosexuals are vain, if not erroneous.

Francis is slowly tackling these problems by making the offenders retire, or emptying their jobs of all content, or removing their entourages and, most effectively, though slowly, appointing his own bishops and cardinals, more pastoral and less clerical.

If the thrust of the book is depressing, there are pleasures along the way. Notable here is the gossip about Chicago’s Cardinal Burke, first leader of the opposition against Francis, and known in the Vatican as ‘the wicked witch of the midwest’; also the ‘diva cardinal’ and the ‘dandy cardinal’. Burke is another cardinal dedicated to his own comfort; his bathroom (which Martel has visited) boasts luxurious perfumed soaps arranged in Japanese style, and a three-sided mirror. He likes to be spoken of in the feminine, as in ‘she works in her home’, and wears intensely feminine clothing, such as the billowing cappa magna, which can have a train up to twelve metres. Yet he denounces in the name of tradition the church that has become ‘too feminised’. In this stance, Martel says, he is sincere and iron-willed, a formidable opponent, however ridiculous this seems.

Despite the flashes of humour, the Vatican that Martel describes – of homosexual factions fighting other homosexual factions (‘score-settling’ is a prominent motif throughout the book) but generally homophobic, the constant gossip and politicking, the double lives, deceit, malice, loneliness, fear, and loss of integrity – is almost unbearably sad, and deeply repulsive. By the end, he has provided an overwhelming case for the axiom he quotes, attributed to Oscar Wilde: ‘Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.’