«"For a week my mother said: 'My God, people, what will people say...' and then she came to terms with it." Don Andrea's mother understood, or rather, she knows. She knows that her son, a forty-year-old priest with a degree in theology, an intense pastoral activity but no parish, is a "practicing" homosexual forced, for obvious reasons, to use a pseudonym to "protect" him. She knows and accepts this calmly, given that she knows Andrea's partner Giorgio, a 26-year-old student, well. Rather, it is the Institution that absolutely must not know. And even if Don Andrea were rigorously chaste, the ecclesiastical Institution should not know, especially now that the Vatican is preparing an Instruction to block gay seminarians from entering the priesthood. Imagine a priest who actively "exercises" his homosexuality. "My father," says Don Andrea, "has always been a communist, a card-carrying member, yet when I took priestly orders he was proud of me, but now he tells me: forget it, get out..." Leaving means leaving the Church, after years of study, hard work, and suffering. "The first time I fell in love with a boy, I was 14. I went to discos, mingled with boys my own age and women, but then as soon as I entered the seminary, at twenty-one, homosexuality became a taboo; I didn't dare think about it. If I had bad thoughts, I immediately went to confession." After a few years, a meeting in the seminary brought out everything that had been repressed: "I met a boy younger than me. We hung out, we talked, and one day in December I said to him: I'll give you a present for Christmas... He insisted: I want it right away... I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. I had to run to the window to catch my breath; my legs were shaking." The story lasted three years, "a real engagement. He went to the psychoanalyst, who told him: this is love and that's it, we went through a thousand adventures to sleep together and at home on Sundays all I did was talk about him.".
Don Andrea has a clean-shaven beard and black hair, and he laughs about it. But when he recalls the end of his first love, his smile fades: "When I was ordained a priest, I began to feel guilty and decided to end it all. It was a terrible suffering, study and chastity, study, prayer and nothing else. I was in Rome, studying theology, and I began hearing confessions on Sundays in a church downtown. I also heard homosexuals' confessions. I tried to explain the doctrine, but every time I told myself I didn't agree with it." And then came a new turning point, the final refusal: "The more I studied the Sacred Texts, the more I thought: but there's nothing wrong with loving another person. At a certain point, I told myself I can't give up on myself, I mustn't..." Don Andrea recounts the semi-clandestine evenings spent with his brothers in the capital's gay clubs: "One evening we discovered that there were many priests at the other tables. One of us said: next time, let's take the breviary and recite Compline. I remember that one of them, seeing us, ran away in a hurry; now he teaches canon law.".
At the café in the center of Milan, where the priest shamelessly recounts his love life, his young companion arrives, blushing when Father Andrea asks him, "What, you don't even give me a kiss?" The plan is to leave the Church as soon as Giorgio finishes his studies: "I can't take it anymore. I thank God for having given me the experiences I've had and for having allowed me to meet the people I've met. But today, I feel a bit embarrassed when I confess sexual sins: those people are looking for someone to remind them of the doctrine, and when I talk to them, I feel a sense, not of compassion, but of sadness, seeing how much they suffer for no real reason. So I try to make them understand..." With what words? "I try to make them understand that doctrine isn't everything. I point out websites for information, I recommend talking about it with others, and most of the time they leave happy with some new ideas to ponder. I always distinguish between official doctrine and biblical questions; I tell them that their lives are at stake.".
So, given the contradictions and worries, why not leave the Church immediately? "I have to think about leaving, for now I can't give up the million and a half old lire I earn from teaching and attending services, but as soon as Giorgio has a job... I can't give up on myself, I can't give up pursuing this love." Now Don Andrea lives in a modest apartment, says Mass almost every day, carries out pastoral activities with youth groups, teaches theology, and is highly regarded by his superiors ("if they knew, they'd be shocked..."). The fact is that while he is forced to hide his "sexual orientation" and his intimate life from his superiors, he is forced to hide the fact that he is a priest from his friends in the Arcigay group, which he attends every week: "Otherwise they'll shower me with insults...". Two separate identities that cannot continue to coexist: "I feel alive, sometimes I feel like I'm 23 or 24, the days fly by and I'm happy. But I realize that the life of a priest today, unfortunately, is irreconcilable with life as a couple, so a choice is made. In a few years, I'll pack my bags and leave." Is packing enough? "The procedures for leaving the cassock are not within my jurisdiction; the hierarchy will investigate, but I don't care. They created this whole juridical-theological mess and they'll deal with it.".
Judging by his gaze and smile, Father Andrea seems genuinely happy. He talks, gets excited, shows photocopies of articles on chastity and homosexuality, and tries to refute the official theories: "Homosexuality is not an illness, even if it's convenient for the Church to think so; it's reassuring. Of course, it's true that many priests go from one depression to another; even when they're hyperactive, they often relapse into anguish because they can't accept themselves for who they are. There are people who go to saunas to have sex or simply watch a movie with a hot actor and are destroyed by guilt the next day. Now that's an illness." The fact is that homosexuality is mostly judged, unlike heterosexuality, as "an orientation that leads you to sin: the problem should not be homosexuality but chastity. Since '68, the Church has been in a bind from the standpoint of theological research, conflating the unitive and procreative meanings, and it won't get out of it until it denies everything. And how can it deny everything? "By recognizing that sexuality in general is something beautiful and good: bonum diffusivum sui, good spreads itself, it's contagious... And then it's not clear why a homosexual should be 'intrinsically disordered,' as they say: these words weigh like boulders. But deep down, even a small lie is intrinsically disordered... Now, after much study, I understand that there is no sin in love. And if the Church doesn't want to acknowledge this, so be it: I have decided to live fully who I am because I don't want to reject the Lord's blessing.".