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Undercover At Catholic Group That 'Cures' Homosexuals

L'Espresso's Michele Sasso went undercover in Turin to attend a meeting of the controversial Catholic group

Screenshot of documentary Desire Of The Everlasting Hills
Screenshot of documentary Desire Of The Everlasting Hills

Italian weekly L'Espresso sent journalist Michele Sasso undercover to a meeting of Courage, an international group linked to the Catholic Church that aims to "cure" people of homosexual activity.

Sasso attended his first Courage session in the northern Italian city of Turin in October, and wrote a highly critical account of his experience in the L'Espresso article published this week. He wrote that Courage treats gays and lesbians like recovering alcoholics whose only option for a good life is total abstinence.

Before his first meeting, Sasso — who'd concocted a story of coming out the day before his wedding — spent an hour talking to a Courage program coordinator who said he had successfully given up thoughts of "sex and pornography" and planned to marry a woman with whom he had a platonic relationship.

Sasso then sat in a circle with other men and women to watch Desire of the Everlasting Hills, a documentary film about three Catholics struggling to reconcile homosexuality with their faith. After acknowledging their sinful same-sex attractions, group members were asked to accept prayer, chastity and community support as the only means for salvation.

After the meeting, Sasso was bombarded with texts and phone calls encouraging him to stay with the group. "There was no concrete advice for those who were suffering and repressing their instincts, for those who were seeking comfort, love and companionship," Sasso wrote. "The group dynamics were like those found in (religious) sects."

Sasso later contacted the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Vatican department that authorizes the creation of new Courage chapters; but an official at the office refused to comment.

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Future

The Smartwatch May Be The True Killer Device — Good Or Bad?

Connected watches don't just tell the time, they give meaning to life.

Photo of a person wearing a smart watch

Person wearing a smart watch

Sabine Delanglade

PARIS — By calculating the equivalent in muscle mass of the energy that powers gadgets used by humans, engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici, a Mines ParisTech professor and president of the Shift Project, concluded that a typical French person lives as if they had 600 extra workers at their disposal.

People's wrists are adorned with the equivalent power of a supercomputer — all thanks (or not) to Apple, which made the smartwatch a worldwide phenomenon when it launched the Apple Watch in 2014, just as it did with the smartphone with the 2007 launch of the iPhone.

Similar watches existed before 2014, but it was Apple that drove their dazzling success. Traditional watchmakers, who, no matter what they say, didn't really believe in them at first, are now on board. They used to talk about complications and phases of the moon, but now they're talking about operating systems.

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