Gaybelamiscandalinthevatican2theswissguardpart

In 2019, Carlo Capobianco, a Vatican security consultant, published a 300-page dossier online (quickly removed by Vatican censorship offices) titled “The Gay Blackmail Network in the Vatican: The Swiss Guard Front.” Capobianco named no full names but gave detailed accounts of secret gay parties inside the Teutonic Cemetery (adjacent to St. Peter’s Basilica), and Swiss Guards serving as lookouts.

He alleged that between 2014–2017, at least six Swiss Guards had been blackmailed, with three paying sums between €20,000 and €100,000 to prevent exposure. Two others reportedly fled to Switzerland and have refused to return to Vatican territory for debriefing.

The Vatican dismissed Capobianco’s claims as “fantasy,” but in March 2020, the Santa Marta Group (Vatican’s anti-blackmail task force) was quietly expanded to include Swiss Guard psychological screening for “vulnerabilities related to sexual secrecy.” gaybelamiscandalinthevatican2theswissguardpart

In December 2018, the Swiss Guard command announced the sudden dismissal of Vice-Commander, Lieutenant Colonel René Biner, a 21-year veteran. Official reason: administrative irregularities. But Vatican insiders told a different story.

Multiple sources reported that Biner was caught in a trap. An external male escort, paid for by a Vatican diplomat’s assistant, claimed to have filmed Biner in a compromising position in a private apartment near Piazza del Risorgimento, just outside Vatican walls. The escort threatened to go to Italian media unless Biner helped him obtain a Vatican passport or permanent residence. Decide if this is fiction, conspiracy theory, or

Biner instead reported the matter to the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice (chief prosecutor). But days later, incriminating photos appeared in the inbox of three Italian journalists. Biner resigned “for personal reasons.” Hours after his resignation, Andreas Nöbel, a 32-year-old Swiss Guard sergeant, was found dead in his barracks room—an apparent suicide. The Vatican press office called it “sudden illness,” but leaked forensic reports cited asphyxiation by hanging.

No official investigation connected Nöbel’s death to the blackmail ring. Yet friends noted he had recently distanced himself from a group of Swiss Guards known “off the books” as La Compagnia dei Sospiri (The Company of Sighs), rumored to organize off-duty encounters with Roman men. In 2019, Carlo Capobianco , a Vatican security

To understand the Swiss Guard’s role, we must recap Part 1’s core event.

In June 2017, Vatican police arrested Francesco Spagnesi, a 48-year-old layman with close ties to the Roman Curia, and Alberto Spampinato, an Italian secret service agent. Their crime: stealing confidential Vatican documents—including a letter from Pope Benedict XVI to the Pope’s own secretary—and attempting to sell them for hundreds of thousands of euros.

But the trial’s revelations went far beyond theft. Spagnesi testified about attending homosexual orgies in Vatican City itself, involving priests, Swiss Guards, and even a visiting bishop. He claimed that blackmail was rampant: affluent gay clergymen, terrified of exposure, were paying bribes to keep their sexual orientations hidden—not because homosexuality itself is a crime in canon law, but because vows of celibacy and the church’s moral doctrine made such acts grave sins.

Prosecutors alleged that Spagnesi and his accomplices used hidden cameras and voice recorders at these gatherings, later threatening to expose participants.