The request was approved, and from that moment the gates of a world that he never imagined existed were opened to him. Via the French embassy in the Vatican he submitted a request to write a book about the Church’s city-state. “I didn’t arouse suspicion because I looked like a harmless curiosity.” Credit: YOAN VALAT / EPA-EFE The Times of London has just published a long, complimentary review by a professor of religious studies from Oxford.įrédéric Martel. Four days after its February 20 release it already topped the best-seller lists in France, Portugal, Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Holland and England. Martel’s book was published simultaneously in a number of languages and is set to appear in dozens more. Indeed, Martel had just returned to Paris from a two-day promotional tour in Spain and has been invited to appear on just about every possible television program. For my part, I am flattered that a star author in Europe, and in the West in general, is devoting quality time to me amid the chaos he’s caught up in. I’d arrived here two hours earlier in order to interview Martel about his new book, “In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy” (Bloomsbury, translated by Shaun Whiteside).
PARIS – “We’ll have enough time for the interview,” the writer and journalist Frédéric Martel assures me.
