THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Thanks to IL SISMOGRAFO website for providing this full article from the paywall-protected La Croix International...

Vatican media reform under new management
seeks to utilize veterans swept out
by Dario Viganò's gutting of Vatican Radio
by Robert Mickens

January 19, 2019

The last several weeks have seen a steady rehabilitation of key Vatican Radio personnel. Only months after Msgr. Dario Viganò was put in charge of reforming and consolidating the various branches of the Vatican's communications department, the Milanese priest had set about demolishing the organization's most valuable media asset, Vatican Radio.

Viganò was made prefect of a newly created Secretariat for Communication in June 2015 and tasked with implementing a reorganization plan drawn up by a special media committee led by Lord (Christopher) Patten of Great Britain.

The idea was to better coordinate the vast resources of some 650 people who had long worked in nine separate and independent offices involved in the various sectors of internal and mass communications.

Vatican Radio, which was founded by Pius XI in 1931 and had grown to employ over 400 journalists and sound technicians, was the largest of these agencies.

With subsections representing nearly 40 linguistic groups, it had an internationalized and well-formed workforce that was unparalleled at the Vatican. It should have been the launch-pad and most important resource for the media reform.

Instead, Msgr. Viganò all but gutted it. And he did so in a way that left deep wounds that have not been healed.

The first major blow to "the pope's radio" came in February 2016 when Father Federico Lombardi retired after more than 25 years of service, first as the director of programming and, then, as the radio's overall head.

The day after the Jesuit stepped down, Msgr. Viganò held a meeting with all the radio's personnel at which many had hoped the new prefect would offer details of the media reform.

Trashing the Jesuits and their Vatican Radio apostolate instead, he spent the first five minutes in his hour-long talk criticizing Lombardi and the Society of Jesus, the religious order that had run the radio since its establishment.

Viganò questioned the Jesuits' competence and professionalism in the communications sector. He then refused to take any questions from his stunned listeners. The encounter left people bitter and demoralized. [But what chutzpah to trash the Jesuits, considering he, Viganò, owed his appointment and new powers to a Jesuit pope!]

Vatican Radio in its original form ceased to exist in October 2016. All that was salvaged was a tiny remnant, Radio Vaticana Italiana. A brand well known throughout the world was suddenly killed. [Frankly, I did not realize from the reporting at the time that this was what the 'downsizing' of Vatican Radio amounted to, although it had started with the inexplicable decision to shut down its shortwave broadcasting, an indispensable feature of its worldwide penetration.]

The pope's radio was the first agency in the communications sector to be folded into a single multi-media entity that was given the bland name, Vatican Media.

You may recall that the now 56-year-old Viganò, an expert in Italian cinema, was first hired by the Vatican in 2012 as head of its television center (CTV). He became famous a year later when he choreographed Benedict XVI's dramatic helicopter departure to Castel Gandolfo on the day Benedict officially abdicated the papacy. Many likened Viganò's stylized filming of the unprecedented event to Federico Fellini's classic 1972 poetic comedy-drama, "Roma." Some were impressed, but others groaned.

It is still not clear why Pope Francis tapped him to oversee the communications reform. [He obviously won his way into the pope's heart, notwithstanding his anti-Jesuit rant at Vatican Radio, if we judge by how Bergoglio appeared to ignore Viganò's blatant attempt to manipulate Benedict XVI - in behalf of Bergoglio, it must be said - when the pope wrote Viganò a letter of praise in accepting his resignation and promptly created a position that enabled the latter to stay on at the communications superdicastery in a position of influence.] The Italian priest seemed to have no clear plan. It was a "do it as you go" operation that bewildered the people under his direction.

Viganò boasted that he wanted to emulate the "Disney model" of creating synergy and interdependence among the various and diverse agencies that had been lumped together under his direction.
And, indeed, people have smirked that there were many times that Vatican communications looked like a Mickey Mouse operation.

In March 2018, however, Viganò resigned under a barrage of criticism for doctoring a photo and misleading journalists over the contents of a letter the retired Benedict wrote him concerning a series of booklets praising the theological thought of the current pope.

Francis reluctantly accepted the resignation, but created a new position in the secretariat (since re-classified as a dicastery) for the embattled former prefect. No one knows what Viganò's current job entails or why he is still at the Vatican.

An Italian journalist, Paolo Ruffini, was named to replace the priest-film expert. And since the change of guard there has been a slow, but steady change of course underway.

Several weeks ago, Ruffini hit the accelerator on what is becoming to look like an extreme home makeover. [It seems rash to attribute these recent changes to the hitherto ineffectual Ruffini, who is widely seen as an interim placeholder - rather than to the pope himself, without whose input nothing of this would have been possible.]

It began on Dec. 18 when the pope fired the editor-in-chief of L'Osservatore Romano and hired another Italian journalist, Andrea Tornielli, to be in charge of setting the editorial line, not just for the paper, but for all Vatican communications.

Then at noon on New Year's Eve the director of the Holy See Press Office and his deputy announced suddenly that they were resigning, effective the very next day.

Alessandro Gisotti, who had worked more than 20 years at Vatican Radio, was[promptly] named director ad interim. The appointment of the 44-year-old Italian -- it can now be seen -- signalled that Ruffini (and perhaps the pope) had begun to reassess the most valuable and reliable resources at hand -- the people from Vatican Radio.

A week later, Ruffini added four more people -- native French, Spanish, and two English-speakers -- to the press office to further assist Gisotti. Each and every one of them was a former employee at Vatican Radio.

The press office's new director ad interim has made an extremely positive first impression during his early days on the job. [Mickens seems to ignore Gisotti's first statements as papal spokesman so far have been primarily defensive and not entirely truthful - namely, the Vatican's version of Zanchetta's appointment ('no accusations of sexual abuse were known to the pope') and of the February 'summit' on sexual abuse. Not to mention the absurd 'exegesis' of the logo chosen for the pope's visit to Morocco, in which, most notably, the Muslim crescent engorges a 'cross' made up of two crossed scimitars.] Internally, press office staff have expressed delight at the new, positive change of atmosphere that is being created. Gisotti has been swift in issuing statements and distributing information to help navigate journalists in their reports on the pope and the Vatican.

This past week the press office issued one of most important communiquès since the changes in its leadership. [Important not because it happened to have been released under Gisotti, but because of its content, with which Gisotti had nothing to do. It reflected decisions by the powers-that-be and would have been released even if Greg Burke were still the spokesman.]

It revealed that the organizers of the upcoming Vatican summit the pope and heads of episcopal conferences will hold on the issue of sexual abuse had held a planning session on Jan. 10.

And it offered the first concrete details of how the Feb. 21-24 meeting will take shape -- it "will include plenary sessions, working groups, moments of common prayer and listening to testimonies, a penitential liturgy and a final Eucharistic celebration."

This line in the statement especially struck many people: "The Holy Father has entrusted to Father Federico Lombardi SJ the task of moderating the plenary sessions of the meeting." [This is most unusual. Lombardi, a priest who has not even been named an honorary monsignor, would be moderating a summit of bishops from around the world, many of them cardinals. The summit is like a synod in the worldwide scope of its representation, and its dedication to a specific topic - and synods are usually moderated by a cardinal.]

This is the same Lombardi who was treated so dismissively by Dario Viganò. It's the same Lombardi who served as director of the press office from 2006 until 2016 when Viganò had him replaced. And it is the same Lombardi who oversaw the professional, institutional and ecclesial/spiritual formation of an entire generation of people that were part of the Vatican Radio "family."

Providing a solid professional and spiritual formation for Vatican Radio's more than 400 employees was one of Father Lombardi's most important priorities when he became the director of programming in 1991. This is something I personally witnessed during my time there from 1989-2000.

He helped further inculcate the sense that the radio was at the service of the Bishop of Rome and his mission. Lombardi sought to better educate and inform employees of the nature of the Holy See and stimulate them to be loyal and trustworthy communicators of its institutional mission.

Today there are still hundreds of people in the Vatican's new communications conglomerate -- journalists, sound technicians, support staff -- who have been shaped, in a real sense, by his efforts. They are some of the best prepared people to lead the reboot of a communications reform that started badly and one that largely excluded their contribution and talents.

However, with the recent changes at the newspaper and press office, it looks like Paolo Ruffini and his team are beginning to set aright this gross under-appreciation of the people from Vatican Radio, many with decades of experience.

The radio arguably enjoyed its greatest prestige during the pontificate of Paul VI. That was the period of its most extraordinary growth and expansion, especially during the Holy Year of 1975, the first such jubilee since 1950.

But during the pontificate of John Paul II and the emergence of the Vatican's severe financial problems (including those tied to the so-called Vatican Bank scandal), Vatican Radio became a punching bag. That was only partly due to the fact that it was the most expensive venture funded by the Holy See, however.

As the Polish pope began to firmly curtail the reformist movement launched by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the radio also became the target of traditionalist bishops and Roman Curia officials who saw the Jesuit-run apostolate as less than loyal to John Paul's "restorationist" policies.

The former Council of Cardinals for the Study of Organizational and Economic Questions of the Apostolic See often took aim at Vatican Radio. One of the members of the council who was most critical of the radio was Cardinal George Pell of Australia.

Each time the council had a meeting, there would be rumors that the cardinals were looking for another religious order or Church group to replace the Jesuits and help shoulder at least some of the radio's financial burdens. The usual names always surfaced -- the Legionaries of Christ, the Salesians, Opus Dei.

During John Paul's pontificate, Vatican Radio was considered the ugly stepchild among the the pope's communications entities. [For all that Mickens claims in the four preceding paragraphs, the activity and scope of Vatican Radio's mission were never affected. To my knowledge, no one criticized Vatican Radio during the John Paul II-Benedict XVI years. The first widespread criticism in the media came only when Dario Viganò shut down the Radio's shortwave capability.]

But many people from various parts of the world cut their journalistic teeth at the radio, some doing only several months in an internship, while others stayed for years, decades or their entire working lives.

Some left to seek more favorable professional advancement and others left when they felt they could no longer support what they saw as John Paul II's increasingly narrow agenda.

There is an impressive number of people for whom Vatican Radio was the start of new careers outside the Roman Curia.

They include Catholic and secular journalists whose names are well-known. David Gibson (formerly of Religion News Service and now at Fordham University), Celine Hoyeau (La Croix), Carol Glatz (Catholic News Service), Michael Kelly (Irish Catholic) and even Edward Pentin (Catholic Herald) are just a few…

Others have gone on to work in various foreign embassies in Rome, two work in communications for Caritas Internationalis, others are employed by bishops' conferences, dioceses and other Catholic organizations.

"I am a son of Vatican Radio," said Alessandro Gisotti upon his appointment to the Holy See Press Office.

But he is just one of many sons and daughters, many of whom are still working inside the Vatican. And Paolo Ruffini seems to have understood what an indispensable resource they are. [I have no personal bias about Ruffini one way or the other, except to recall his pitiful performance as the designated spokesman of the 'youth synod' in place of Greg Burke at the time (in fairness to him, not his fault, because the entire synod, and how the Vatican reported it, was being manipulated by its Secretariat). Since Ruffini came to the Vatican from being director of the Italian bishops' conference TV network, would not he be expected also to tap some of the men and women in the CEI's media conglomerate which includes a radio-TV network, the daily newspaper Avvenire, and the news agency SIR?]