It’s a great mystery of the faith. How else can one explain the fact that, in the wake of the Catholic Church’s ever-increasing sex scandals, Pope Benedict XVI was given such a warm reception in Britain last week? Obviously, coverups of sexual abuse, some of them involving children, do not bother the faithful who flocked to get a glimpse of the man on the throne of the popemobile.

While the continued worship of this pontiff is perplexing, the fact that the Pope is pushing for the sainthood of a man named John Henry Newman is even more puzzling.

On the final day of Benedict’s visit, thousands braved the rain to attend the beatification mass for Newman, a former Anglican preacher turned Catholic priest. A writer and outspoken critic of Rome in the 1800s, Newman was never fully accepted by a Church that now wants desperately to make him a saint, even foregoing the usual scrutiny that accompanies these proceedings.

No doubt, Benedict has a political agenda. Why else would he push sainthood for a church critic who was described in his day as having “a soft spectacled manner with its half-effeminate diffidence” and “a woman’s soul in a man’s body?”

Newman and his closest friend Father Ambrose St. John were like husband and wife, with John Henry “even doing things like packing his bags before he went away, making sure he was taking his medicine, making sure he kept dental appointments, that sort of thing,” according to Newman’s biographer John Cornwell in his book, Newman’s Unquiet Grave: A Reluctant Saint.

“So it was almost like a wife, but without the marital bed.”

The two men lived in the same house for 32 years, and were inseparable. Newman, who described his grief upon his friend’s death as equal to that of a husband or wife, insisted on being buried alongside St. John, with a single gravestone that reads, “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth).”

If that isn’t enough to set off the old gaydar, there’s the entry in Newman’s diary in which he describes St. John’s feelings for him: “From the first he loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable. As far as this world was concerned, I was his first and last ... he was my earthly light.”

Sounds like a pre-gay liberation couple to me.

Though much has been made of a diary entry about the temptation of girls at Christmas parties, that quote was dug up at the request of the Vatican after allegations arose about Newman’s sexuality. If the entry is true, perhaps Newman was bisexual. Or he was lying to himself, as closet cases often do. Just look at the modern-day closet types who marry and have kids and then get caught tapping their feet in men’s rooms or hiring escorts to carry their luggage for them.

As British gay activist Peter Tatchell of the London group OutRage has said, “How can the Vatican be so sure (that Newman wasn’t gay)? Were its spies in Newman’s bedroom every night of his life?”

“Even if the Vatican knew he was gay,” Tatchell said, “it would never admit it. The Pope would deny the truth to suit the Vatican’s homophobic agenda.”

Benedict’s done worse.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sailing Beyond Columbus, and editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which was nominated for both an American Library Association and a Lambda Literary award. His website is www.avicollimecca.com.