@Sexuality Policy Watch
12 nov. 2021
In the last Special Issue of last year we have done a brief assessment of Vatican politics. Concomitantly, we published an article by the Italian political scientist Massimo Prearo on Pope Francis’s speech act on same sex marriage that, in October 2020, had major media impact. Since then, in many other occasions, the pope has manifested his opinion on this same issue, but also on abortion and gender. With respect to gender, his stronger speech was deployed in his visit to Slovakia when, in conversation with a group of Jesuits, he said that “ gender exerts a diabolical fascination on people because it is too abstract in respect to the concrete life of a person” .
A month later, in Italy, the Senate stalled the processing of a provision known as the Zan Law, which aimed at criminalizing hate crimes and discriminatory speeches. These two events did not seem unconnected. The defeat of the Zan Law — which was a major disappointment for the Italian LGBTTIA+ movement — seemed a productive site to be looked at, as to better grasp the state of art of Vatican’s position on gender and its role as a political actor. We have, therefore, invited Prearo to share his views on the trajectory of the law and actors involved. He, graciously, accepted.
In his analysis of the failure of the Zan law approval, Prearo indeed analyzes Vatican politics, but not in isolation. Rather, looks at the relation of Vatican with the wider anti-gender camp in which both the conservative neo-Catholic movement and gender critical feminists have played key roles. We dearly thank Massimo for sharing his exceptional contribution to the understanding of this episode that may, significantly impact, on the future on anti-gender frays in Europe and worldwide.
Read the interview here >>>