Reader’s advisory: Squalid stuff ahead. Sorry. Please skip if you’re squeamish or prone to temptations of despair.

I didn’t make up the word. “Pornocracy” is the term professional historians use to refer to a dark period in the papacy, in the 10th century when local Roman nobles picked the popes — and often fought each other in the streets to maintain control over the Vatican. The word literally means “rule by whores,” a reference to the fact that several times wealthy courtesans linked to these local factions were the power brokers choosing (and deposing) pontiffs.

Well, the pornocracy has returned, but it’s actually less wholesome this time. I already reported here that Cardinal Tucho Fernandez, who took Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s old job as top doctrine cop, believes sexual pleasure itself (he doesn’t specify with whom) is one means to grow closer to God. This same doctrine has been taught by Aleister Crowley, Margaret Sanger, and other occultists. It’s the “sex magick” of ancient fertility religions, which sacrificed children to demons, as Jonathan Cahn explains in The Return of the Gods. No big surprise, then, that Pope Francis publicly embraced an unrepentant abortionist, and invites pro-abortion politicos to speak at the Vatican.

This time I must report a few other even less edifying facts about this regime that has gained control of the See of St. Peter. I hope this doesn’t give aid and comfort to anti-Catholics, just as I hope that honest reporting about Russell Moore doesn’t make people hate Baptists. To report on the wicked men wrecking a Christian church is not to bash that church, but to defend it.

Chaplain to Caesar, Mammon, and Sodom

It’s an ugly but indisputable fact that a sexual libertine faction has taken over the Vatican, and the leadership of that church in several Western countries. The LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION juggernaut is rolling over our church, enthusiastically cheered by Caesar and Mammon. For more proof, see the grotesquely sexualized, homoerotic image of Jesus chosen in Seville, Spain to announce the city’s celebration of Holy Week. I won’t reprint the image here, but read the Daily Mail’s report if you can stomach it. At this point, things are bad enough that only God can fix them. If the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is any precedent, the process won’t be pretty.

When the Vatican issued a document licensing the blessing of same-sex couples in churches, LGBT activists were thrilled. They knew it would strip faithful priests of protection, exposing bishops to lawsuits (and hence those priests to pressure) if they wouldn’t stage faux weddings that bless what the Catechism calls “acts of grave depravity.” They’d each end up in court like those Christian wedding planners and photographers.

Bishops in some countries eagerly went along, even warning all their priests that they had no choice but to comply. Bishops who have ordained zero priests this year embraced this surrender as a renewal. Pope Francis’ good friend and official advisor James Martin, SJ, promptly blessed a posh male/male couple in front of a NY Times photographer. Of course he was not rebuked.

Africa Tells Francis to Pound Sand

But many bishops resisted, in some European countries and in every single nation in Africa. That continent, where the church isn’t shrinking but growing, where Muslim persecution only fuels more fervent faith, rejects the polymorphous perversity that’s poisoning the West. And its bishops told Pope Francis to go pound sand.

Afraid that the whole continent might simply cut ties with Rome if he tried just removing faithful bishops — as he did Bishop Joseph Strickland in Texas — Francis backed down. He made remarks about the backward “culture” in Africa which were not much less insulting than the arguably racist comments of liberal Cardinal Walter Kasper a few years back. If you aren’t on board with monkeypox bathhouse antics, it seems, these liberals think you’re one step from swinging in the trees. When in fact, you are simply a Christian.

I have a solution: In any country where the number of Catholics who attend Mass every week — a solemn obligation on pain of sin — is less than 20% … the bishops should be fired. Removed from office. Those who are cardinals should be stripped of their right to vote in the next papal election: Who wants their opinion anyway?

Make such countries mission territories, and subject their local churches to control by thriving churches that speak the same language. In fact, just to impose some fitting humility, put them under bishops from countries that used to be their colonies or mission areas. So put Germany’s churches under bishops from Cameroon, Britain’s churches under Nigerians, and Belgium’s under the Congo’s. And so on.

Pervert Priest Whose Art Is Used at the Vatican

More filth has floated down the Tiber recently, however. The Vatican is protecting and refusing to remove from the priesthood one of the pope’s favorite artists, despite powerful evidence that he’s a serial sexual abuser of nuns, including blasphemous sex rituals profaning the chalice used at Mass. Catholic Conclave reports:

Don Marko Rupnik, a Slovenian theologian and artist famous throughout the world for his mosaics and expelled last summer from the Society of Jesus after the superiors considered the degree of credibility of the accusations of abuse made against him “very high”. Despite this, in October the Diocese of Koper agreed to incardinate the former Jesuit.

In other words, with the pope’s approval, this abuser returned to work as a priest in a parish. The blow-back from outraged Catholics

led the Pope, under pressure from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, to grant an exemption from the statute of limitations to allow a trial by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the cases of abuse alleged against Rupnik at the time of his stay in the Loyola Community in the nineties.

The Vatican is still using the primitivist paintings Rupnik produced on the covers of books it publishes. And the ugly reports about Rupnik’s actions keep coming. Also from Catholic Conclave:

The woman told journalist Federica Tourn of the newspaper Domani: “Once, sitting at the table facing each other, Rupnik said to me: ‘now let’s see who is stronger!’. He grabbed my hands on the table and, palm up palm, began to press with great force. I screamed that it hurt, but he didn’t stop.” In the end, the then Jesuit would have put such pressure on the novice’s hand to the point of breaking her index finger. The alleged victim continues: “Rupnik did not apologize. He remained calm and said: ‘now you have the permanent seal of the Society of Jesus’. And he added: ‘I did it out of love.’

…

At the end of 2022 another former nun had also told Tourn that the artist would have asked her to have threesome sex with another nun from the Community in his room in Rome, claiming that “sexuality, according to him, had to be free from possession, in the image of the Trinity”. This former nun also reported … she was taken twice, again by Rupnik, to some porn cinemas on the outskirts of the capital.

Still a priest in good standing, thanks to Pope Francis. Rupnik’s ultimate fate will likely rest with the sex weirdo mentioned above, Cardinal Tucho Fernandez. He’s now the highest authority in the church on sex abuse cases.

Molested His Nephew, But He’s Still a Bishop

Speaking of abusive clergy, Pope Francis’ visit to Belgium will be overshadowed by another squalid scandal — a bishop who molested his own nephew, who still retains the title of bishop and has not been removed from the priesthood. As the head of the Belgian bishops conference wrote:

‘In recent years, the Belgian bishops have written several times to the Holy See (in 2017 and 2019) to speak out more clearly about ecclesiastical sanctions against Roger Vangheluwe.’

In their joint letter to Pope Francis in October 2023, they reiterated their demand for Roger Vangheluwe’s removal from ordained ministry. His record continues to weigh on us and on all of society.

We know that those responsible in Rome are aware of the magnitude of the scandal and are working for a solution. It will be difficult for Pope Francis to make a peaceful visit to our country in September until there is clarity on this matter.

Here’s a wrinkle in that story: One of Pope Francis’ closest allies, who conspired in his election and was the first invited onto the balcony to congratulate him after he was chosen, is Cardinal Godfreed Daneels. As I reported here at The Stream years ago, we have audiotape of Daneels berating Vangheluwe’s abuse victim, and demanding that he stay silent:

The Spectator (U.K.) cites transcripts of a meeting where Danneels was caught on tape urging the victim to stay silent about the abuse, after which he “suggested that the victim should seek forgiveness — and accused the man of attempted blackmail when he demanded that Danneels should tell Pope Benedict XVI about the abuse.”

These are the pirates who have seized control of the Barque of Peter. May God have mercy on us all.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.