His personal immorality is really of no relevance to anyone except him. What is important is his heresy and destruction of the Church, which is a public matter. There have been popes who were privately immoral, but none of them ever taught heresy to the whole Church. Conversely, a man like Ratzinger can have a personal life that is above reproach in terms of carnal sins, but he could still be a heretic and an antipope.

I don't understand the interest in the private, hidden sins of someone who was obviously one of the greatest public enemies of the Church in her entire history.

I don't understand the interest in the private, hidden sins of someone who was obviously one of the greatest public enemies of the Church in her entire history.

I'm with you. He's long gone, has been judged, received his just reward and is serving his eternal sentence, it is best to simply leave it at that.

Well, it's just part of the puzzle in terms of how/why he was able to destroy the Church.

On the contrary, as hard as he and *all* those who went along with him tried, and still try - and will never stop trying, the Church has not been destroyed - and never can be.

Apart from the SV hypothesis that he was illegitimate due to heresy, there is in fact a possibility that he was merely being blackmailed and that his actions were therefore null and void (not having been free acts of his).

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I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that being blackmailed of having your private sins of impurity revealed to the world would constitute the level of fear necessary to invalidate an act from a canonical point of view. This idea has been floated in various contexts, such as in speculations about Ratzinger's motives for resigning. I believe people speculated that Ratzinger's brother was guilty of sins involving choir boys (and I have never seen any evidence this is true to begin with, but), and that Ratzinger was told he needed to resign or his brother would be accused and put on trial, etc.

I just don't think this type of fear constitutes grave fear. Grave fear generally means fear of death or severe injury or things like that. Losing some face in front of the world doesn't seem in the same ballpark for anyone, especially for a pope (or putative pope), who can't be removed from office even for the grossest immorality, so it's highly unclear what actual harm he would suffer from such a revelation to begin with.

Lest anyone think accusations of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity on this forum are inappropriate, hereunder is what WIKIPEDIA makes available to anyone in the world.

Rumours of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity and denial

In 1976 Paul VI became the first pontiff in the modern era to deny the accusation of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity. On 29 December 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a docuмent entitled Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions concerning sɛҳuąƖ Ethics, that reaffirmed church teaching that pre- or extramarital sex, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activity, and masturbation are sinful acts.[141][142] In response, Roger Peyrefitte, who had already written in two of his books that Paul VI had a longtime ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ relationship, repeated his charges in a magazine interview with a French gαy magazine that, when reprinted in Italian, brought the rumours to a wider public and caused an uproar. He said that the pope was a hypocrite who had a longtime sɛҳuąƖ relationship with an actor.[143][144][145] Widespread rumours identified the actor as Paolo Carlini,[146] who had a small part in the Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday (1953). In a brief address to a crowd of approximately 20,000 in St Peter's Square on 18 April, Paul VI called the charges "horrible and slanderous insinuations" and appealed for prayers on his behalf. Special prayers for the pope were said in all Italian Catholic churches in "a day of consolation".[144][146][e] The charges have resurfaced periodically. In 1994, Franco Bellegrandi, a former Vatican honour chamberlain and correspondent for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, alleged that Paul VI had been blackmailed and had promoted other gαy men to positions of power within the Vatican.[148] In 2006, the newspaper L'Espresso confirmed the blackmail story based on the private papers of police commander General Giorgio Manes. It reported that Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro had been asked to help.[146][149]

Pope Paul VI left the Vatican to go to the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, on 14 July 1978, visiting on the way the tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo,[155] who had introduced him to the Vatican half a century earlier. Although he was sick, he agreed to see the new Italian President Sandro Pertini for over two hours. In the evening he watched a Western on television, happy only when he saw "horses, the most beautiful animals that God had created."[155] He had breathing problems and needed oxygen. On Sunday, at the Feast of the Transfiguration, he was tired, but wanted to say the Angelus. He was neither able nor permitted to do so and instead stayed in bed, his temperature rising.

His confessor, the Jesuit Paolo Dezza, said that "this pope is a man of great joy",[57] and that:

If Paul VI was not a saint, when he was elected Pope, he became one during his pontificate. I was able to witness not only with what energy and dedication he toiled for Christ and the Church but also and above all, how much he suffered for Christ and the Church. I always admired not only his deep inner resignation but also his constant abandonment to divine providence.[164]