Posted on 09/17/2026 12:41:39 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Leo XIV appointed a new bishop the head the Diocese of Chioggia who last year presented on a book addressing the integration of homosexual orientation into living one’s religious vocation.
Serving as titular bishop of Oria, auxiliary of Rome, and rector of the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary, Bishop Michele Di Tolve was named to his new office on Wednesday morning.
According to the Holy See bulletin, he was born in Milan on May 19, 1963, ordained on June 10, 1989, served as rector of the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Milan from 2014 to 2020, and was named auxiliary of Rome by Pope Francis on May 26, 2023.
In July 2023, Francis not only made Di Tolve the rector of the city’s principal seminary but, in an unusual personal decree, charged him with an oversight and coordinating role for all priestly formation functions in the Archdiocese of Rome and coordinating their activities. He also stipulated that the new rector was to report directly to the Pope on important matters.
Francis had already publicly described his close relationship with Di Tolve when he received his parishioners from Rho on March 25, 2023. He recalled meeting the then-young priest after becoming a cardinal while he was still in Italy visiting a cousin who pointed out “an exceptional assistant pastor” to him. Francis removed his ring so as not to be recognized and found Di Tolve “going from one side to the other, moving like a dancer with everyone. That’s how I met him. And he has remained that way all his life: someone who knows how to move,” he said.
On April 9, 2025, Di Tolve was a principal speaker at its Lateran Palace presentation on a book by psychotherapist Chiara D’Urbano titled Vocazioni felici: Integrare orientamento sessuale, affetti e relazioni (“Happy Vocations. Integrating Sexual Orientation, Affections, and Relationships”). Pope Francis wrote the book’s preface.
The book presents a thesis that priests and religious can achieve happiness “through integrating the world of feelings and affections, beyond hetero-affective and homo-affective orientation.” Whether a person has a normal sexual orientation or a deep-seated, objectively disordered homosexual orientation, which officially precludes one’s admittance to seminary or Holy Orders, is not “the central issue, but affective integration” what is most important.
With regards to his close relationship with Pope Francis, one Italian publication drew a harsh portrait in response to his decreed 2023 appointment. Citing one priest of the curia of the Archdiocese of Milan, the Daily Compass reported an assessment of his earlier six-year rectorship: “This seminary, he destroyed it… you can’t count the people who grabbed the door and slammed it (behind them).”
Quoting another anonymous source, the outlet reported the years in the seminary under Di Tolve “were years of controls and of real persecution.”
“One can say that Fr. Michele had a genuine obsession with control, to the point of having cameras installed throughout the seminary for video surveillance which in reality were to monitor the seminarians’ movements,” the source said.
Before diaconal and priestly ordination, it alleged, “he had them sign a sheet in which the seminarian declared he was not homosexual, and various other things. One almost had the impression that he wanted to free himself from any implication or consequence for the future of the newly ordained priest.”
His easy irascibility was also claimed, at least toward those he did not like. “Several seminarians during his rectorship were dismissed or expelled in an ugly way”; others, instead, “openly homosexual, continued their path and were ordained without any problem.”
The rector’s criteria of “discernment” were not at all clear to sources, given the ease with which he dismissed some candidates for the priesthood, while others, who were plainly problematic, seemed untouchable, the Daily Compass reported.
These sources also tie Di Tolve to the case of Emanuele Tempesta, ordained in 2019 and in 2024 convicted at first instance of sexually abusing at least seven boys between 8 and 12 years of age and sentenced to six years and six months. Tempesta denied the charges.
While the Archdiocese of Milan expressed “profound sadness and dismay,” the Daily Compass added that Tempesta had been stopped for two years in formation by another rector, Luigi Panighetti, and that “to unblock the situation it seems to have been precisely Msgr. Di Tolve, who allowed him to continue the path and reach the priesthood.”
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Ping
The Jesuits pefected that long ago.
Remember how they said that the boy scouts had to let homosexual in?
In less than a decode they were out of business
Face reality. How many healthy, normal heterosexual males regardless of their religiosity, would allow themselves to be ordained into a life of mandatory celibacy. No problem for agnostic homosexuals who find a life living with like minded men and being supported by the “faithful” not a bad life.
Thank you, you are right. I’ve always thought this and I’ve questioned the Catholic Church ever since.
There is no such thing as homosexuality in Christianity...
It is an abomination to God...
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