Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández, a close personal friend and ghostwriter for Pope Francis, whom the pontiff called to Rome to lead the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office, elevating him to the rank of cardinal, has provoked a veritable ecclesial earthquake with the recent discovery and translation of a graphic sexual text comparing orgasm to mystical union with God.
“Let’s not forget that women have a rich venous plexus around the vagina, which maintains a good blood flow after orgasm,” Fernández wrote in his 1998 book Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality. “That’s why she is usually insatiable. She needs to release the pelvic congestion, and when this does not happen, after orgasm she may want more.”
| Madonna or whore? A little too simplistic, even for me. |
Fernández said this week that he had cancelled Mystical Passion not long after it was published and “never allowed it to be reprinted.”
Mystical Passion made sense at the time but it is a book “that I certainly would not write now,” he told Crux, an online Catholic news outlet.
What many observers have found most troubling about the book is not its prurient exploration into the nitty gritty of human orgasm — as odd as it may be considering its authorship — but rather an entire chapter recounting conversations with a 16-year-old girl about her erotic visions of Jesus.