According to journalist Giulio Ferrari from the magazine L'Italia, two things stopped the process of the beatification of Paul VI; his alleged homosexuality and his pro-Communist sympathies. Ferrari reports that the initiative opposing Montini's beatification came from one of the directors of the Lombard League.
In the article "Do not beatify Pope Montini," the principal argument - Paul VI was alleged to be a homosexual - is based on the book by Prof. Franco Bellegrandi, which we have already featured in this section.
Ferrari also reports that Cardinal Silvio Oddi was present at the book release to lend it his support and prestige.
Top right, the front page of the article "Non beatificate Papa Montini" in L'Italia, March 15, 1995. Below right, excerpts from the article, below left, our translation from the highlighted Italian texts.
However, the beatification of Paul VI will raise polemics, either because of the doctrinal (taking the word in its broader political and religious meaning) twists of this proposal, or because his Papal profile cannot be strictly defined as "above any suspicion." The dirty laundry of Montini was publicly exposed also by the recently released book Nichita Roncalli controvita di un Papa [Nikita Krushev and Roncalli - Unknown Aspects of a Pope] (Edizioni Eiles, Roma, 1995), an explosive book about the progressivist current inside the Church, written by Franco Bellegrandi, ex-correspondent of L'Osservatore Romano and an honor chamberlain of His Holiness [Paul VI]. It was enthusiastically presented at a sensational press conference by Cardinal Silvio Oddi.
Bellegrandi, a habitué of the Vatican palace, offers his personal testimony about the discussed homosexuality of Paul VI, which was publicly divulged by the homosexual writer Roger Peyrefitte in a clamorous interview with the weekly Il Tempo on April 4, 1976.
The author of Nichita Roncalli quotes, among others, the testimony of a security service officer at the Vatican, according to whom, "the favorite of Montini (an actor who dyed his hair red) had permission to go and come whenever he wanted in the papal apartment."
But the sexual preference of the future "blessed" is not the only scandal to hit the air.
He [Paul VI] was put out of Rome during the pontificate of Pius XII because of his relations with Communism. After the death of Papa Pacelli and under the protection of John XXIII, the future Paul VI re-established those relations that had been forbidden. The cordial agreement with Communism is for Montini a true choice of a course that would make him, as Pontiff, depose the heroic Cardinal Mindszenty who was disagreeable to the Hungarian Communist government.
(Giulio Ferrari, "Non beatificate Papa Montini, in L'Italia, March 15, 1995, p. 16)
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