Behind the scenes
at the Pope's newspaper
by John Hooper
July 20, 2009
The Vatican daily newspaper,
L'Osservatore Romano, may have a small circulation, but it is hitting the headlines in its own right. So what really goes on in the offices of the Pope's in-house paper?
Newspapers around the world may be suffering, but at least one very small one is making a big impression.
[In over a century of existence, OR, through its succession of editors and their variety (or lack thereof) of editorial styles and initiatives, has always been attributed an importance in the world of diplomacy and politics - not culture, in general - that has nothing to do with its limited circulation. And the importance is not to everything the newspaper says but to papal pronouncements and official Vatican texts.
So let's not over-interpret nor misrepresent the media interest it has attracted lately, because of an apparent editorial bias minimizing the importance of life issues in the Vatican's Realpolitik, nor the obvious and welcome willingness to accommodate a spectrum of cultural opinion (eg, on the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Harry Potter and Oscar Wilde).]
The Vatican daily paper, sells only 12,000 copies. Even taking account of its six weekly and one monthly edition in languages other than Italian, the total circulation is less than 100,000.
And yet in recent months it has developed a knack of getting itself into other newspapers and media. This week, it hit the spotlight again with a review of a book on Oscar Wilde that argued he was "one of the personalities of the 19th century who most lucidly analysed the modern world".
Published in any other paper, it would have passed unnoticed. But coming from the Pope's house organ, it was hailed as a sign that the Vatican had forgiven Victorian England's most scandalous gay writer (though, in fact, Wilde was received into the Catholic church on his death bed).
For a paper with such visibility, [the offices of]
L'Osservatore could scarcely be harder to reach. Anyone who tries to enter the Vatican soon finds their way blocked by a Swiss Guard. But, at one of the side entrances, the Porta Sant'Anna to the north of St Peter's, if you have accreditation or a letter of authorisation, the guards in their florid Renaissance uniforms will wave you through.
Take the first street on the right and follow it to the end, and you will end up in front of a nondescript building of the sort that is disappointingly characteristic of much of the "secret city".
There, on the first floor, is the office of the bearded and bespectacled academic who is responsible for much of the fuss.
Gian Maria Vian, a 57-year-old former teacher of patristic philology, was put into the editorship of
L'Osservatore Romano by the Pope in 2007, and has since proved to have a flair for controversy that would do credit to Max Clifford.
"This is a very special newspaper, which has enormous responsibilities because it is the newspaper of the Pope," he says. "But at the same time it has to try to be normal."
That is the big change. Until two years ago,
L'Osservatore was anything but normal. Its relationship to the Vatican was like that of Pravda to the Soviet-era Kremlin. There were two sorts of articles: those in which a Vatican department had directly intervened (signalled to the knowledgeable by three discreet asterisks), and those that had been written by
L'Osservatore's staff, but with such care not to embarrass or offend that, with rare exceptions, they were stiflingly boring.
"When I took over the paper", says Vian, "the Pope wrote me a letter in which he said that
L'Osservatore had to be present in the cultural debate." Now that may not sound to you or me like an explicit remit to jazz it up. But Vian, who is perfectly attuned to the subtleties of Vatican communication (his father was the chief librarian), is certain it was.
Just like Rupert Murdoch outlining his demands to a new editor of the Times, Benedict had a list of things he wanted to see in the revamped paper: "The pope asked me for more international coverage, more attention to the Christian East, and more space for women."
Really?
"Yes, get more women writing and devote more attention to women's issues."
So, like any editor keen to keep the proprietor happy, Vian hired
L'Osservatore's first-ever female staffer.
[No, it has had other female staffers before on the non-Italian editions. What was new was to have female contributors writing articles adn even Page 1 editorial commentary with their bylines, e.g. the Jewish professor Anna Foa, or Catholic historian and ethicist Lucetta Scaraffia).]
The daily and its various offshoots have a tiny complement of only 25 journalists, and a total staff of less than 100.
[To put this in the right perspective, the newspaper and its language editions (except the monthly Polish one) is only 8 pages; and the language editions are weekly compendiums and translations of what already has appeared in the daily Italian edition.
What the newspaper could use are foreign correspondents which it doesn't have and probably can't afford. It should be able to work out a system where it can get usable information from the Apostolic Nunciatures in all the countries where they exist - the Vatican has relations with 170 states, but many Nunciatures serve more than one state if they are small enough and located in a contiguous geographical area.
Once in a while, this happens, as from the Nunciature and Church in Iraq, India and a few African countries lately - and when it does, even if the report is short, it usually provides information not seen in the regular media.]
Not the least interesting aspect of the changes that have swept through this tiny media outcrop is that they offer a quite different view of a Pope generally regarded as ultra-conservative and a bit other-worldly. Vian insists this is a caricature and that, insofar as the media is concerned, Benedict has a firm grasp of the processes involved.
"When the deputy editor and I were invited to see the Pope to talk a bit about the paper three weeks after we were appointed, he gave us to understand that he'd like to see a few more pictures in it."
Vian made it a rule to use colour photographs every day on the front and back as part of a redesign that he says has turned
L'Osservatore into "one of the most elegant of European newspapers".
But the really important difference is the content. The paper's international coverage is still closely monitored by the Vatican's secretariat of state (though Vian says its desk officers "do not go through every line"), but the cryptic asterisks have disappeared.
The new editor has freed his contributors to write about a much wider range of topics, and allowed them to express views that are not necessarily those of the Vatican, let alone Benedict XVI, but which catch the attention of outsiders all the same.
(When Britain's ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Campbell, suggested to Vian that the prime minister might write a piece for the paper ahead of his visit to see the Pope, he leapt at the idea, even though nothing like it had been done since
L'Osservatore was founded in 1861.)
[And Gordon Brown did himself proud with a thoughtful article on the economic crisis.]
Much as the editor welcomes the publicity, however, he says that a lot of it is generated by a fundamental misunderstanding. "This is not an official newspaper."
Referring to another recent article that made waves, he explains: "When we publish an article on Michael Jackson and say that he was an important phenomenon, that does not mean the Pope is giving him his blessing."
Some readers, though, would argue it does – or, at least, that it should. In its former, dryer guise, if
L'Osservatore liked or hated or took something into consideration, then it was a fair bet His Holiness [whoever he was] did too.
And now? Vian is almost impossible to pin down. The paper may not be "official", but he concedes that it "represents an authoritative point of view".
L'Osservatore is a "
newspaper of its environment that is conditioned by that environment".
[Should it be conditioned by its environment? Is that not relativistic? And if it is ebcause some conditioning is inevitable, to what degree can it 'adapt' or play to that environment?]
One theory among those who monitor the Vatican is that this ambiguity is actually quite useful to the Pope and his advisers, because it can say things they may not believe but do not mind being said.
Vian says that the most heated controversy of his editorship so far arose over an editorial that he published ahead of President Obama's visit to see Benedict earlier this month.
Conservative Catholics in the US and elsewhere were appalled to see that, despite the new President's moves on abortion and stem-cell research, the Vatican's daily took a positive view of his first 100 days. There were calls for Vian to resign.
One Italian commentator branded him a pro-abortionist, and some in the US concluded he was a maverick liberal whose views ought not to be taken seriously.
[No. Vian is obviously not stupid, but he is perhaps naive in 'pontificating' on the American political scene in a way that shows (to Americans who keep track of media coverage and the increasingly sensitive daily tracking polls of public opinion) that he is far from fully informed.]
In fact, Vian's approach may have been closer to the Pope's than they thought.
The Vatican's agenda stretches far beyond the pro-life/pro-choice battleand in many other areas, such as social justice, disarmament, the Middle East and Cuba, the US's new Democratic administration is more in tune with its thinking than the previous Republican one.
[Hooper's assumption is fundamntally wrong. While the Vatican's diplomatic agenda obviously goes beyond life issues, these continue to be non-negotiable principles of the Church. And for the Pope, as spiritual leader of the Church and as Vicar of Christ on earth, that can never take second place to ideological conflicts in the Middle East or elsewhere.
The Pope - as well as the Vatican, through its press office and through the way OR itself reported the meeting (possibly under explicit orders) - made that very clear in his meeting with Obama.]
Certainly, the editorial cleared the way for a cordial visit and what one insider described as the most substantive recent conversations held between a Pope and a US president.
[CAN YOU SEE THE PRO-OBAMA MEDIA WHEELS SPINNING???? Except for the Pope's emphasis on life issues, who can say it was any more substantive than the talk he had earlier with, say, the Prime Minister of Japan?]
Clearly, Vian is still taken aback by the ferocity of that row, but reasons that "It's a sign of interest. It shows that we count."
[Don't kid yourself! OR 'counts', as it has always done in the past - because it puts official papal declarations and important Church documents on paper for the rest of the world. But with the Internet, it is so much easier for the rest of the world to just go the Vatican online. So even in that respect, it already counts less.
And it's not going to 'count' as a big media player in terms of affecting cultural attitudes in a meaningful way because it is a small paper, small in terms of content (how much culture can you put into an 8-page paper that has to accommodate other things as well) and likely to remain small in circulation (the Internet, you know).]
And, he says, while the controversies that have surrounded his editorship have not increased
L'Osservatore's circulation, "I consider that to be a success in the context of an Italian press which is suffering a truly dreadful crisis."
[Not really. It means OR has its particular captive audience, or niche, that, for now, will always be there - the embassies and all the Curial offices, to begin with.]
In any case, as he quipped in an interview with the conservative US magazine
National Review, "It's my publisher, the owner, who is infallible, not me".
I share the following comments posted by Ignatius Insight readers to the above article:
If the new editor, Vian, sees L'Osservatore as a "newspaper of its environment that is conditioned by that environment" and he panders to it (as he seems to be doing), but concedes that L'Osservatore also "represents an authoritative point of view" of the Vatican, the Pope, and the Church then he is on a very slippery slope of (you name it): denigration, defamation, calumny, slander, and even derogation.
The world needs to know that the "new" L'Osservatore is not just unofficial but worse, a pretender, a fake capable of causing significant harm.
Posted by: Ed S | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 08:35 AM
If L'OR weren't the pope's paper, it would not last a week. Period.
Posted by: Ed Peters | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Ah, good, the New York Times-ecclesiastical edition. We all needed that.
Posted by: David Deavel | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 01:55 PM
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/07/2009 02:04]