Vatican Hunts Down Gay Priest Subjects

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has sent investigators to check for homosexuals at seminaries in the United States. According to a Vatican document, special investigators have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the U.S. for "evidence of homosexuality."

The agents also are to look for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, The New York Times said Thursday.

The Vatican document spelling out the investigative mission surfaced at a time when Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of the need to "purify" the church. Catholics are currently waiting for a ruling from the Vatican on whether homosexuals should be totally barred from the priesthood.

Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the U.S. military who is supervising the review, told The National Catholic Register last week that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations" should not be admitted to a seminary.

Rev. Thomas J. Reese, who was pressured to resign as editor of the Jesuit magazine America by the Vatican, told The New York Times that with the shortage of priests, the church can hardly afford to dismiss gay seminarians.

"You could have somebody who's been in the seminary for five or six years and is planning to be ordained and the rector knows they're a homosexual," said Father Reese. "What are they going to do, throw them out?”

The issue of gay seminarians and priests has been in the spotlight after the many sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church in the recent years. Last year, a study commissioned by the church found that 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys.