Even if Irish College in Rome is serious study centre, Eternal City can provide myriad distractions. In 2002, at the height of the US Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis, Pope John Paul II summoned American bishops to Rome for 10 days. During the visit, the then president of the US Bishops Conference Wilton Gregory, said the Catholic Church (in the US, but presumably elsewhere too) had a problem with aspiring priests.
So many young men of a homosexual inclination were
applying to study for the priesthood that “we might as well talk about a
feminary rather than a seminary”, he declared. In 2002, a study by a
Canadian consultancy, ReligiousTolerance.org, reported half of seminary
students were gay. However, the percentage is irrelevant. For homosexual
men, the reality is the priesthood is very attractive.