This pope’s immediate predecessor, Pius II, once suggested that Paul, at the time an archpriest at the Vatican Basilica, be called Mary Pietissima, according to Platina’s Lives. This may have been an insinuation about a predisposition toward fancy clothes and fine things, or it could have been a intimation of the church leader’s homosexuality, the latter of which earned Paul II ink in Arno Karlen’s Sexuality and Homosexuality. While there’s less bountiful evidence than with other popes, John XXII made the list of gay popes included in Noel Garde’s 1964 tome Jonathan to Gide: The Homsexual in History. King Philip IV of France, an enemy of the pope, would dispatch spies to gather information on Boniface, and based on reports from Roman aristocrats, he would publicly accuse the pope of sodomy, according to Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II.
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Indeed, he would be driven from and returned to power multiple times before his excommunication in 1049. This church leader would model his papacy on the rule of Roman Emperor Elagabolus, a potentially transgender libertine, and would host gay orgies in the papal palace, according to historian Wayne Dynes’s Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Historians say John also had mistresses, making him the first bisexual pope.Ĭonsidered by many to be the first “primarily homosexual” pope, Benedict would be accused of turning the Vatican into a “male brothel,” according to researcher Lynne Yamaguchi Fletcher. The debauchery actually led to his being deposed as pope in 1045 after Bishop Benno of Piacenza accused him of “many vile adulteries and murders,” according to historian Ernst Ludwig Dummler, but he quickly returned to power after Benno and other critics were expelled. It’s unclear if the story of Pope Joan should be considered a medieval urban myth, but hundreds of chronicles tell the story of the ninth-century church leader. In other accounts, she was killed immediately upon being found out. She would be found out when she went into labor in the third year of her papacy, according to the records of Martinus Polonus. By some accounts, her son would go on become the bBishop of Ostia and have his mother, kept in isolation post-scandal, interred there. But Joan, considered by some scholars to be the first and only trans pope, apparently did not live a life of celibacy. She made her way to Rome and rose to the level of cardinal in the church before being elected as pope. The following includes Catholic popes, cardinals, and archbishops who faced rumors or accusations of unorthodox orientation.Īs the story of Pope Joan goes, the female religious figure was born in Mainz, Germany, and arrived in Athens disguised in men’s clothes before joining the priesthood. There is evidence that of the 266 popes in history, nearly a dozen were gay, bisexual or, in one case, transgender.
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While the Roman Catholic Church has long condemned homosexual acts as sinful, history nevertheless shows many of the church’s leaders engaged in same-sex love. Take a look at some of the queer leaders of one the world’s most influential organized religions.