Since the Vatican is a global institution, understanding it often requires at least a passing familiarity with a few foreign languages. Italian is a no-brainer, Latin still helps, and in the Pope Francis era, Spanish gives you a leg up, too — especially Porteño, the brand of Spanish spoken in Francis’ native Buenos Aires.

Perhaps the most challenging language, however, is what one might call “Vaticanese,” referring to a frequently bewildering cluster of terms and phrases that have taken shape in and around the place, and often mean something only to insiders.

One recent entry in that lexicon is “gay lobby,” which emerged during the first Vatican leaks scandal under Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and still pops up in Italian tabloid headlines and water-cooler chatter.

Shortly after his election, Francis reportedly said he had to “see what we can do” about this “gay lobby” in an informal session with leaders of men’s religious orders. More recently, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, coordinator of the pope’s council of cardinal advisors, told a newspaper that there is, indeed, such a “gay lobby,” and that Francis is trying to chip away at it.

Here’s the confusing thing: When Italians say “gay lobby,” they don’t mean “lobby” in the conventional political sense, and they often don’t really mean “gay” in the sense that sex has much to do with it.

For Americans, a “lobby” is a political pressure group with a clear set of aims. We think of the National Rifle Association’s fight against gun control, for instance, or Planned Parenthood’s defense of abortion rights.

Read the article “Decoding What It Means to Say the Vatican Has a ‘Gay Lobby’” on cruxnow.com.