"of course you will deny it."

words spoken by an apostolic nuncio – a representative of the pope – to former catholic archbishop rembert weakland of milwaukee when weakland confessed to a homosexual relationship he'd had some 20 years earlier. details of the affair (and the hefty sum paid to keep it quiet) were being revealed by the other man in an interview on good morning america.

weakland told the nuncio he could not deny the relationship and resigned from his post the following day.

weakland served as milwaukee's archbishop from 1977 until that abrupt resignation in 2002. in a new book he'd originally planned to have published only after his death, weakland talks about that affair, his homosexual feelings as a teenager, and a "loneliness that became very strong."

he also discusses his view of the church's teaching on homosexuality:

“If we say our God is an all-loving god, how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”

weakland and the milwaukee archdiocese are targeted by several lawsuits regarding priests involved in child abuse and the church's failure to remove those priests before more minors were abused. "the concern," weakland says, "was more about the priests than about the victims.”