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ROME, May 27, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference was filmed this weekend giving Holy Communion to a notorious “transsexual” and homosexualist political activist who goes by the name Vladimir Luxuria, at the funeral Mass of a controversial Genoan priest. 

The deceased priest, Fr. Andrea Gallo (hereafter referred to as Don Gallo), strongly opposed Catholic teaching on sexuality. In the video clip, published by the national newspaper Corriere della Sera, Angelo Bagnasco, the Cardinal Archbishop of Genoa is seen giving Communion to Luxuria, and another transsexual at the funeral of Fr. Andrea Gallo.

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Three thousand flocked from all over Italy for the funeral of Don Gallo, the priest they called the “pretaccio communista” (an ironic use of “lousy communist priest”) and the “angelic anarchist”. Some participants wore t-shirts with the slogan, “Tell me who to exclude and I’ll tell you who you are”.

Standing in front of a group of priests wearing rainbow stoles and addressing the gathered thousands, Vladimir Luxuria gave a eulogy in which he thanked Don Gallo for “letting us open the doors of your church and your heart.”

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“Thank you for having us transgender creatures feel willed by God and loved by God. We hope that many will follow your example and someone will apologize.”

Born Wladimiro Guadagno, actor and former prostitute Vladimir Luxuria (“Lust” in Latin) was a member of the Italian parliament and a founding member of the  Communist Refoundation Party. Although he remains physically a male, he claims “female identity” and is famous in European politics as the first openly “transgender” member of any European national legislature. In 1994 he helped organise Italy’s first Gay Pride festival in Rome.

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Gallo, whose casket was decorated with a scarlet scarf, was known for his promotion of Marxist ideologies, and was popular with the more radical end of the homosexualist movement having participated in June 2009 in the Genoa Pride demonstration, complaining to the press about the “uncertainties” of Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Gallo was called Gay Character of the Year by homosexualist activists.

In March this year Don Gallo told media that the Catholic Church needs an openly gay pope and said that homosexual priests should be allowed to “express” their sexuality. “Because repression leads to pedophilia,” Gallo told ANSA news agency, adding that he had been sexually abused as a young priest.

No formal canonical sanction was ever laid against him during his priestly career. An obituary in Avvenire, the Italian bishops’ official paper, called Gallo “Priest of the road for the weak,” and said he gave “a witness of Christ and of the Church.”

Under the governance of Cardinal Bagnasco, who had been named a “front runner” for the last Conclave, Genoa is a haven for priests who openly oppose Catholic teaching and discipline.

For instance, Fr. Paolo Farinella is another favourite of the secularist Italian media and a well-known, public dissenter from Catholic teaching on a variety of topics. He was recently featured in a newspaper interview accusing Pope Benedict XVI of having “raped” the Church when he issued the document allowing the broader use of the traditional Latin liturgy. In the article, Fr. Farinella said that Pope Benedict had lost the faith when he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X and therefore had no further authority over him.

“The abolition of the excommunication of the four Levebvrite bishops is a rape carried out by the Pope against the Church,” he said. He accused Pope Benedict of hypocrisy because he did not offer “the same ‘act of mercy’ towards those Catholics who have been thrown out of the Church for an ‘excess of progressivism.’”

Farinella instigated a petition to stop the re-introduction of the traditional Mass and spoke against the presence of Crucifixes in Italian classrooms. He was also criticised for celebrating a memorial Mass upon the death of well-known euthanasia advocate, Piergiorgio Welby to whom the Church had refused religious funeral.

However, other Italian priests have voiced opposition. Don Ariel Levi Gualdo, blogged about his frustration with such incidents, calling the Don Gallo funeral a “porno-funeral” and Gallo a “real shame to the college of the priesthood”.

Don Gualdo, who said he has celebrated a Mass for the repose of Gallo’s soul, said that Gallo, the “red priest” had betrayed the meaning of the Catholic priesthood, becoming instead a “humiliating and embarrassing ideologue and a demagogue who has helped to divide rather than unite, using distortions of the Gospel to support his Marxist ideology.”

“Andrea Gallo has spent his life to marry and support all that is in open conflict with theology, morality and the social doctrine of the Church, but especially in open conflict with the Gospel.”

He added, “That he assisted the poor and disadvantaged does not make him a true Christian or a true preacher of the Gospel.”

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Don Gualdo added a note about the participation of Cardinal Bagnasco, saying, “I do not hide my discomfort with the idea that Angelo Bagnasco is the president of the Conference of the bishops of Italy, which in turn are our bishops.”

“I’ve never been shocked by the antics of Andrea Gallo,” Don Gualdo said, “because among our clergy lie more and worse. A shock for me was instead his bishop, and his predecessors, who have never taken any steps against him.”

Contact information:

Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Phone: (011) 39-06-6988-4217
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-5303

Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3357
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3413
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-3409
E-mail: [email protected]