The potentially explosive claim was made Thursday by the Rome daily La Repubblica. The newspaper said the network was described in a 300-page report presented to the Pope by three cardinals assigned to investigate a series of embarrassing internal leaks that rocked the Vatican last year.

The cardinals interviewed dozens of prelates and lay people in Italy and abroad. Their report describes a Roman Catholic church divided by factions, including a “cross-party network united by sexual orientation,” La Repubblica said.

“For the first time, the word homosexual was pronounced,” the newspaper said, referring to a meeting when the cardinals reported their findings to Pope Benedict.

The Pope was handed the report Dec. 17. He shocked the Catholic world by resigning less than two months later — the first Pope to abdicate in more than 600 years.

Apparently using words found in the report, the newspaper said it contained evidence of “external influence” on Vatican officials from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature.”

“We would call it blackmail,” La Repubblica added.

The Vatican’s spokesperson, Rev. Federico Lombardi, said reporters should not expect anyone from the Vatican to confirm or deny the allegations.

“We’re not going to run after all the speculation, the fantasies or the opinions that will be expressed on this issue,” he added. “And don’t expect the three cardinals to give you interviews, either, because they have agreed not to answer (questions) or give information on this issue.”

The three cardinals who investigated are Spanish cardinal Julian Herranz, Italian cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, and the Slovak cardinal, Jozef Tomko.

The Pope asked them to investigate after his papacy was undermined in early 2012 by the leaking of a series of Vatican documents. They included private letters to the Pope complaining of corruption and cronyism in the awarding of Vatican contracts. Allegations of money-laundering at the Vatican’s bank were reignited.

A confidential letter from a Vatican official described a presumed plot to kill Benedict and discussed his potential successor. Other leaks linked the murder-suicide of two Vatican Swiss guards in the 1980s to the kidnapping of a 15-year-old Vatican resident, the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II and the controversial burial in a Roman Catholic basilica of Enrico De Pedis, one of Italy’s most notorious gangsters.

The Pope’s butler was eventually convicted of stealing the documents.