Newly released files by the U.S. Department of Justice show that convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein and former Trump aide Steve Bannon discussed strategies to undermine Pope Francis, revealing how the Vatican was viewed as a geopolitical pressure point by Epstein’s network of political and financial leaders.
In text messages between Bannon and Epstein from June 2019, Bannon seems to suggest that Epstein was an executive producer of a documentary film that never got made, based on a 2019 book by French journalist and researcher Frédéric Martel, “In the Closet of the Vatican.”
Martel’s book delves into the culture of secrecy and hypocrisy regarding homosexuality at the Vatican. When it was published, the book galvanized conservative outrage because it included claims stating that 80% of Vatican clergy are gay.
The correspondence between Epstein and Bannon took place at the height of concerted conservative efforts to oppose Francis, who had signaled his openness toward LGBTQ Catholics and divorced or remarried Catholics and who expressed concern for migrants and the environment in his public statements and written documents.
“There’s a clear concerted campaign among a number of traditionalist figures and institutions to bring down Francis in the name of some sort of ‘purification,’ which culminates in the Viganò letter,” said Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh, who said the connections revealed in the Epstein files were an interesting new element. “What obviously is clear, though, is that they had formed an alliance of sorts.”
To continue reading this article, click here.
With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), Claire Giangravé and Religion News Service, where this article originally appeared.
