More news from Rome concerning communications
December 18, 2018
...Today I received an article from Avvenire (daily organ of the Italian Bishops Conference) saying that there is a new guy, Andrea Monda, running L’Osservatore Romano and that Andrea Tornielli is nominated to the editorial section of the Dicastery for Communication.
[As I understand it, he is to be 'editorial director', which means he has vetting and veto powers over anything that the various Vatican news media may publish or disseminate. It also means he has become far more powerful now than when he was 'merely' the unofficial spokesman of the reigning pope via Vatican Insider.] One of the presenters of Monda’s recent book was the Jesuit, Antonio “2=2=5” Spadaro. Monda also worked for Avvenire.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with these entities, here are some parallels. Just as
Izvestia was the paper of record of the Supreme Soviet,
L’Osservatore Romano is the paper of the Holy See. That would make
Avvenire like
Pravda, the official paper of the Party. The Dicastery for Communication might be something like the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press, with various departments under it, such as Goskomizdat (censored printed matter: fiction, poetry, etc.), Goskino (films) and Gosteleradio (radio and TV). These parallels limp a bit, and
I don’t necessarily intend to give Izvestia and Pravda a bad name.
Now we have the likes of Tornielli in Rome and Jesuit Martin appointed as a consultor to the Dicastery.
What happened to Giovanni Maria Vian as OR editor? Traded in for a new model after 11 years? I don't know enough about Monda, except that he has written books about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and its symbolisms, and alaso that in 2014, he wrote a small book entitled Benedetta umilta: Le semplice virtu di Joseph Ratzinger dall'elezione a Papa alla rinuncia (Blessed humility: The simple virtues of Joseph Ratzinger from his election as pope to his renunciation). Maybe the headhunters at Vatican Inc did not know that?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/12/2018 22:48]