A new book to be released by publisher Bloomsbury make the claim that 80% of the priests in the Vatican are gay.

The publisher’s website for the new book, In The Closet Of The Vatican: Power Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, claims it is a piece of investigative journalism compiled from over 1,500 interviews including 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, 45 papal ambassadors or diplomatic officials, 11 Swiss guards and more than 200 priests and seminarians which took place over four years.

In The Closet “is a book that reveals these secrets and penetrates this enigma. It derives from a system founded on a clerical culture of secrecy which starts in junior seminaries and continues right up to the Vatican itself.

“It is based on the double lives of priests and on extreme homophobia. The resulting schizophrenia in the Church is hard to fathom. But the more a prelate is homophobic, the more likely it is that he is himself gay.”

The author claims that while many are in denial, other accept their sexuality, enjoying discreet relationships. It goes on to claim that others use male prostitutes while at the same time denouncing homosexuality and contraception.

This is not the first huge study of gay life and culture the author has undertaken. His previous work, Global Gay: How Gay Culture Is Changing the World, was a “panoramic view of gay rights, gay life, and the gay experience around the world” which involved eight years of research and interviews across 50 countries.

In a provocative piece of timing, the new book is due to be published worldwide on the same date as the Vatican holds a summit to discuss the problem of sexual abuse within the church. However, the book makes no correlation between homosexuality and abuse, rather it blames a secretive culture which tries to avoid discussion.

In recent news, LGBT+ activists in Northern Ireland have organised a protest outside a Belfast Presbyterian church ahead of a planned screening of a film that promotes conversion therapy for members of the LGBT+ community.