St. Peter Damian (1007-1072) was a great Doctor of the Church and Cardinal-Archbishop. He served as a papal legate and counselor to three consecutive popes. He helped lead the Church during some extremely difficult times, when she was truly in need of great reform, and he defeated several anti pope claimants who unjustly sought to usurp the Throne of St. Peter.

(There is much more to his biography than this small excerpt. Our hope is that simply this brief reading will inspire you to read more about him.)

St. Peter Damian was the youngest of a very large family and nearly starved to death as an infant because his mother refused to feed him as she thought it may tax the already minimal family resources. He was raised as an orphan and employed as a swineherd. One of his brothers, a priest, helped give him an education and by age 25 he was a famous teacher. Seeking to escape the immoral university life, he made a forty day retreat and then took the habit of hermit monks. He helped bring great learning, discipline, and reform to numerous monasteries In 1049 he published a terrible treatise exposing the vices of the clergy, the Liber Gomorrhianus, which he dedicated to the Pope. In 1057, the new Pope Stephen X named him a cardinal. Peter did want to accept, agreeing only once the Pope threatened to excommunicate him otherwise. He helped reform Milan, where the clergy openly bought and sold benefices and even publicly ‘married’ the women they lived with. He was an ardent defender of the Pope, challenged various anti-popes, battled the political powers threatening the Church, helped end schisms, and brought about reconciliation among various ecclesial groups. In 1072, he was sent to Ravenna to reconcile its inhabitants to the Holy See; there he died of illness at a monastery.

Condemnation of the Sin of Sodomy from Liber Gomorrhianus
 by St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church (if you are interested in reading more of this, you could probably find more it online with a quick search).

The vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because "Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Ghost from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust: It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up Hell and closes the gates of Paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things ...”

“This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons: This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God ... She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be pierced by the spears of every vice...”

“She humiliates her slave in the Church and condemns him in court; she defiles him in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm and consumes his flesh like fire ... this unfortunate man is deprived of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind's vision is darkened.”

“Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence.”