The tone of press coverage of Pope Francis is changing
Last week was another rough week for Pope Francis. In fact, it’s been an increasingly rough series of weeks. A good bit of the bad press could have been predicted. His series of morning fervorini from the Domus Sanctae Marthae that began on September 10 and ran through two full weeks – in which he made oblique but clear and repeated reference to the Viganò affair, comparing the bishops to Christ and those calling for accountability to the mob that cried for Christ’s innocent blood – did little to calm the crisis.
Both reporters and the faithful have grown impatient with this response, and some have begun to wonder whether the Vatican even has a coherent response to the crisis in which the whole Church is currently embroiled. This is unsurprising, since Francis has still not made an explicit and reasonably full disclosure of his mind with regard to the crisis.
The controversy even affected what was otherwise an eminently reasonable request he made this past weekend: that the faithful pray the rosary daily during October, a month especially dedicated to Our Lady. He also asked Catholics to recite the Sub tuum praesidium and the Prayer to St Michael, “thus to join in communion and in penitence as the people of God”, according to the communiqué from the Holy See press office, “in asking the Holy Mother of God and St Michael Archangel to protect the Church from the Devil, who always seeks to separate us from God and from each other.”
The statement continued: “The prayer – the Pontiff affirmed a few days ago, on September 11, in a homily at Santa Marta, citing the first chapter of the Book of Job – is the weapon against the Great Accuser who ‘goes around the world seeking to accuse’. Only prayer can defeat him.”
Any faithful Catholic will tell you that the Pope is not wrong.
Even so, patience is wearing thin, perhaps especially in quarters generally well disposed to Pope Francis and to what they perceive to be the agenda he has established for his pontificate.
Late last month saw the publication of a 19-page dossier on Pope Francis in the German magazine Der Spiegel. The treatment was anything but flattering. Though it covered well-trodden ground, the Spiegel paper contained several anonymous quotes from cardinals, including one who said: “He preaches mercy, but in truth he’s an ice-cold, crafty Machiavellian and – even worse – he lies.”
The report also contained detailed reportage of Francis’s days as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, especially regarding his record of leadership in the fight against clerical abuse. It does not paint an inspiring portrait. (The electronic version of the Spiegel report is behind a paywall, but readers will find a summary with links at CatholicHerald.co.uk.)
Meanwhile, John Allen, the editor-in-chief of Crux, the influential English-language online news journal, frankly stated that Pope Francis was facing a “trust deficit”. Allen added that the Pope’s apparent unwillingness to inform the faithful either with respect to his specific conduct or his plans to address various crises – China and sex abuse are the ones Allen cites explicitly – was not helping.
Transparency is the key: Pope Francis has spoken compellingly about transparency, but arguably has not practised it when it counts. Journalists – and now not only professional Catholics of the chattering classes with a certain political, theological or ideological slant – are beginning to wonder whether he really means what he says about transparency, or ever did.
Also telling in this regard was the tension, palpable even in the transcript, between reporters and the Pope during the in-flight press conference en route to Rome from the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The trip was almost entirely overshadowed by news that broke of the provisional accord with China and developments in the crisis of episcopal leadership over sex abuse and general clerical morality. With all that, there was little interest left over for a trip that did not contain anything in the way of major news.
Pope Francis, however, refused to answer questions about other issues until he had fielded several about the trip itself. One reporter, Cindy Wooden of the Catholic News Service, openly challenged this rule, and afterwards tweeted about her frustration.
At a certain point Greg Burke, the director of the press office, even told Pope Francis: “Holy Father, the questions about the trip are finished”.
He came back to the topics of interest eventually. But after just one question – regarding the China deal, in which the Pope made another reference to the Viganò affair, citing support from the Chinese faithful and Church leaders in China when it came to the former nuncio’s spectacular j’accuse, which he said he took as a “sign from God” – it was time for dinner.
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