Overview

The Pope is Not Gay! is an irreverent history of homophobic and sexist obscurantism in the Holy Roman Church and an endoscopic examination of its greatest contemporary advocate, Pope Benedict XVI. In his inimitable style, Angelo Quattrocchi traces the evolution of Joseph Ratzinger's life, beginning with the pope's childhood in Nazi Germany, his membership of the Hitler youth in Bavaria and his conscription into the German anti-aircraft corps. His has been a startling career, a story that helps explain his development as a reactionary theologian and culminates in his carefully planned election to the papacy in 2005. Quattrocchi contrasts the Pope's doctrinal rigidity on issues such as birth control, abortion, and homosexuality to his extravagant attire and his controversial relationship with his private secretary, Cardinal Georg Gänswein. Rigidity on all fronts. Illustrated throughout and including Ratzinger's key writings on homosexuality as an appendix, The Pope is Not Gay! sheds new light on the Catholic Church's sustained interference in contemporary politics and society and the hypocrisy of its pontiffs past and present.

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9781844674749

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Reviews

Life has changed. The world has changed. But Angelo remains the same, a dissident who resists the depredations of an increasingly marketized culture.A Tariq Ali

[A] witty polemic. * Time Out London * [A]n entertaining and provoking pamphlet. * Xtra * The Pope talks like a gay man, walks like a gay man and dresses like a gay man ... If the Pope is gay, his hypocrisy is breath-taking. -- Peter Tatchell Not your average Pope-bashing ... the book is deeply offensive -Catholic Herald * The Catholic Herald * Quattrocchi draws our attention to the amount of care, since his election, Ratzinger has taken with his accessories, wearing designer sunglasses, for example, or gold cufflinks, and different sorts of funny hats and a pair of red shoes from Prada that would take the eyes out of you. -- Colm Toibin * London Review of Books * Fantastic * National Secular Society *

Author Information

Anarchist and poet, Angelo Quattrocchi (1945-2009) reported from London, Paris and the US for Italian newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC, Channel 4, and Italian television. His books include The Beginning of the End: France, May 1968, What Happened, Why It Happened with Tom Nairn.

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