The subtitle of this article, "The media image of the Pope has changed much in the past seven years" and its introductory paragraph give a misleadingly positive view of what the journalists interviewed had to say about Benedict XVI - in part because Mora who put it all together, chose to pick out only the positive things that the newsmen had to say about Benedict XVI for his introduction. But alas, their overall view is largely negative, and despite their demurrals - mostly for show, it seems - virtually unchanged from all their prejudice-bound perceptions seven years ago. Some perceptions are even appalling... Believe me, not one of those interviewed below, except perhaps the lady from ANSA, began with "that attitude of good will without which there is no understanding" that Joseph Ratzinger humbly asked of his readers in the Preface to Volume I of JESUS OF NAZARETH... And that is why I chose the banners I used for this post!
Benedict XVI in the eyes
of those who cover the Vatican
The media image of the Pope has
changed much in the past 7 years
by H. Sergio Mora
Translated from the Italian service of
VATICAN CITY, April 24 ZENIT.org) - From initial suspicicion in the media to great interest today, Benedict XVI is a Pope whose image in the media has improvbed fremarkably.
From someone who was initially seen by the media as the 'Panzerkardinal; and the 'rottweilker of the faith', he is now
seen for what he really is:
S kind and humble intellectual who has learned to be comfortable with crowds and has endeared himself to the faithful.
A reformer who has never lost sight of his principal mission: to announce Christ to the world, and bring Catholics closer to their Church.
A Pope who has Faced openly the Church's most critical problems fromm the frontlines, most notably that of the various crises caused by sex-offending priests and the bishops who covered up for them, in the process making many enemies.
ZENIT spoke to some of the journalists who have been covering the Vatican and have followed Benedict XVI's Ponitificate,
Giovanna Chirri, Vaticanista of the Italian news agency ANSA:
This Pope is a theologian who has become a reformer but has nedver lost sight of his mssion: to announce Christ to the world. He found himself heir to quite a few problems - just think of the priest pedophiles and the Vatican financsial system - but he has always acted with decision.
There has been no lack of communications difficulties and information leaks, but he has intervened in all such problems insofar as he is able to.
In all his homilies in recent days and during Holy Week, it seemed obvious to me that his principal objective is to spread the faith and to do it in such a way that allCatholics may be capable of announcing Christ.
Frédéric Mounier, Rome correspondent of the French Catholic daily,
La Croix:
In Rome, I found a reality about Benedict XVI that is different from his image in France. This Pope is not a Panzerkardinal, but a humble intellectual, who is very attentive about listening to others.
But I fear that his positions are not much listened to today because they do not fit the usual rules of media communication - he speaks in depth, and he is an intellectual. He takes tHE time to think out his positions, which are not based on emotion. So his thoughts are very interesting but far from the capacity of ordinary folk to listen. I think this is a great challenge to his Pontificate.
What on earth is Mounier saying? Has he listened to the Pope's catecheses, his Angelus mini-homilies, his messages and addresses to young people and children, and even his major homilies, at all? The Pope never condescends to his listeners - much less, insult them as Mounier does in saying that ordinary folk do not have the capacity to listen to the Pope's words - by talking down to them in any way. Rather, he manages to speak in a way that brings them almost effortlessly to the level of understanding the concepts he presents.
People like Mounier often tend to forget - if they ever bothered to inform themselves, to begin with - that Joseph Ratzinger spent a quarter-century teaching young university students, with such communicative powers that his lectures - delivered without notes - were attended by students who were not even registered in his classes and even by outsiders drawn by his early fame as a spellbinding lecturer. They called him Goldmund even then ('golden mouth', Chrysostom in the Greek form) for his mastery of communicating knowledge, even if he was always soft-spoken and never a Ciceronean orator. In the same way, people came expressly to listen to his homilies when he was Archbishop of Munich.
Yet even the best Vaticanistas have never seemed to factor in this overwhelming reputation that Joseph Ratzinger had as a master communicator long before he came to Rome. If they had, they ought not to have been too surprised that he has been attracting more audiences to the Vatican than even the wildly popular John Paul II.
Did Mounier ever stop to consider why - or was he even aware of it - documents like the first two encyclicals and Sacramentum caritatis were almost instant million-copy sellers in Italy alone? When did papal texts like this ever become best-sellers with the 'common folk'? (Italy does not have a million intellectuals.) Or, is he even aware that the Vatican publishing house is thriving on its mass-publication Benedict booklets that compile his thoughts on various spiritual topics (the Benedetto XVI Pensieri series of which there are at least two dozen titles by now?
Benedict XVI proves, among all the leading persnalities in the world today, that if you have something to say that corresponds to what people seek, they will come to hear you and will buy your books.
So Mr. Mounier, do your homework on Joseph Ratzinger, and then drop into a LEV bookstore - there are two off St. Peter's Square - and sample those two-euro booklets on Benedict's thoughts. Fortunately, for all of us, there are other sources of information other than just the MSM.]
Salvatore Izzo, Vaticanista of the Italian news agency AGI
Benedict XVI is acquiring a paternal image that initially he did not have. It's like someone who has been used to lived alone in a condominium where he may perhaps find all the various ambient noises irritating, until he has children himself, and everything changes.
He has been working mightily to bring all Catholics close to the Church - not just the traditionalists but also the more innovative ecclesial movements. It may not be obvious to everyone, but that's how it is.
[Frankly, I was taken aback by the near-banality of these comments by Izzo, because I find him, by far, the most diligent and productive of all those reporting on the Pope daily; more importantly, he does so with the right attitude towards the Pope and the Church, an unabashed 'senire cum Ecclesia'
Patricia K. Thomas of Associated Press Television News:
As a journalist, I see him up close, one might say, and I think he has changed since the start of his Pontificate because he is a humble man who is always ready to listen. [So how exactly has he changed? He was always humble and a good listener!]
If you ask me how Americans see him, I will say that these days, because of the Vatican's decision about a group of US sisgers, I can say that there is an anger against him and the Vaticvan that many are venting on the Internet. [So, Patricia, have you been able to quantify whatever is posted on the Internet to make the general statement that 'there is an anger against him and the Vatican'? Aren't you just projecting the AP world-view?]
Those who do not go to Mass believe that the Pope wants to return the Church to the past, that he listens more to the Lefebvrians than to the American sisters. [Those who think so are uninformed bigots who simply take their cues from what media like AP tell them.]
When he went to the United Sates he spoke against pedophilia [and presumably gained a lot of approval], but now there is a crescendo of hostility.
[There you go again, speaking as though you had a built-in sensor that enables you to poll all Americans instantly on any subject you can think of, so you can state your own opinions as a general statement applying to all Americans. How many of them - with all the economic woes besetting them - would even bother to thnk about those sisters now feigning to be 'victims' when they have been the aggressors lo these past 40 years!... And one should remind Ms Thomas that bad poll numbers - real ones, not imagined - mean absolutely nothing to the Pope, who is not running for Mr. Congeniality. ]
Juan Lara of the Spanish news agency EFE:
I have always had more or less the same perception of Benedict XVI because I have always followed Vatican news, but there certainly has been a change. In the sense that initially, he was seen as a person who was too serious, orthodox, conservative.
But he has shown himself to be very amiable, and someone who has proposed a rather advanced social Magisterium.
Then there is the significant fact that the issue over scandals caused by misbehaving priests came to a head in his Pontificate, and that he confronted it head-on, and has proceeded to clean house. It is very important that he did so from the frontlines himself.
Maarten Lulof van Aalderen, correspondent of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf:
The perception that people had of Benedict XVI from the start has not changed at all. From the media point of view, he was a professor-Pope - that was the idea, and it has remained. [This man is not saying anything! He is a professor-Pope, among many other things that he is. But what exactly is the MSM idea - Van Aalderen's idea - of a 'professor-Pope'? Is that supposed to be a black mark? ]
This is a Pope who still finds it difficult to communicate with the people. He has not managed to resolve this problem at all!
[Another ignoramus who should go the head of the class with Mounier, wearing the dunce cap. People like them are either genuinely ignorant about the Pope's long career before he came to Rome, or are deliberately wearing blinders so as not to have to change the idee fixe they have about him. They do not even try to mask their obvious biases and a priori judgments, which they should be able to submerge if they were genuine journalists. But this is how they perpetrate their black myths. If you say something often enough, no matter how false or outrageous, the public will end up accepting your lies as fact.]
Elisabetta Piqué, correspondent in Italy for the Argentine daily
La Nacion:
Benedict XVI, without having the charisma of John Paul II, has succeeded to loosen up a bit in public. Originally, he did not dare touch anyone, but now he takes children into his arms and kisses them. [I do not remember that he ever did not dare touch anyone! When he went to his old apartment the afternoon after his election as Pope, he touched everyone who held out their hands to him. And he started kissing babies the first time he walked down the central aisle of St. John Lateran, where he celebrated his first Mass as Pope before he did that in St. Peter's Basilica... Creating false memories' is another manifestation of journalist bias - they invent memories and state them as fact to support some false assertion they make.]
I think he has learned to manage himself in front of crowds. [Gee, you think? A man who strikes almost everyone who gets to meet him as extremely refined would need to 'learn to manage himself in front of crowds'? What is he - a spastic or a brutish boor?]
He has learned to endear himself to people wherever he goes. [This woman's condescension is boundless! Can anyone really 'learn to endear himself' to others, and if he does, isn't he then a hypocrite? You are either endearing because that is your nature, not because you want to be, or you can take on a persona meant to be endearing, as manipulative politicians like Obama do, which makes them prime hypocrites!]
Consider his last apostolic visit. I have been to Cuba before, where almost no one goes to Mass. And yet he managed to make himself liked. Not to speak of Mexico.
When he was elected Pope, he had the image of the Rottweiler, of the Grand Inquisitor. But instead he has shown himself to be very amiable, and while he is an intellectual, he is also very humble. Everytime the Vatican has made a communications error, he has always acknowledged it.
[Oy veh, Elisabetta! Did you just become Ms Hyde after being Dr. Jekyll? I think this kind of schizophrenia tends to overtake those who have less constitutional resistance to reality and are therefore able to make some concession to fact.]
Andres Beltramo, Vaticanista of the Mexican news agency Notimex:
I think he has changed, but even the perception about him has changed. Starting with the fact that he has now travelled to many countries, and this has accelerated the change of perception.
In his last trip, for instance, he was not known for the most part. Especially because he had remained in the shadow of John Paul II, and there was a great question mark about his person. ][That's Beltramo's personal perception - because that's not at all the attitude so raucously and enthusiastically demonstrated by all the Mexican groups present at every General Audience and Angelus at the Vatican or Castel Gandolfo, who are certainly not cheering the shadow of somebody!]
But when they [the Mexicans] were exposed to him directly, there wass a change of attitude. [Is Beltramo saying that all those hundreds of thousands who turned up to welcome Bdenedict XVI in Leon simply turned up and spent hours waiting for him - this shadow of somebody - without knowing anything about him? Whatever 'change of attitude' Beltramo imagines, it certainly was not from utter lack of interest for someone they did not know or care to know, to love at first sight! It had to start from a healthy interest and curiosity in a Pope - after all, there have only been 265 throughout history - and the veneration for the Pope that is ingrained in cradle Catholics. And then, the actual physical sight of him turned all that interest, curiosity and veneration into a personal bond that was collectively felt. The very same 'mechanism' that had caused the Mexicans to develop a special affinity to John Paul II, caused them now to feel a similar affinity to Benedict XVI.]
Of course, the media had written and spoken about him, perhaps critically, which was reflected in the public attitude, but the effect was temporary. What sticks more is what the people feel after seeing the Pope personally, and so they are left with a peerception quite unlike what the media have told them. [All the more reason they wouldn't have turned up in such massive numbers in Leon for his arrival if they had swallowed whatever negative images the media had conjured up for them earlier!]
Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent for UCA News, Religion News Service and Vatican Insider:
Benedict XVI found himself facing a challenge and a crisis that he had never imagined he would have to build his Pontificate on - the sexual abused crisis.
But he was able to respond in a way that measured up to the great demands of the circumstances - something which not many persons within the Church hierarchy would have been able to do, and would simply have dismissed it by saying "The world is attacking the Church".
But this Pope is aware that it was an evil within the Church that must be extirpated. Perhaps he may not have wished that the early years of his Pontificate had not been focused on this, but in the eyes of the world, this is what has marked his Pontificate so far. It is a challenge he was not expecting but to which he has responded adequately.
Call me unduly prickly and intolerant of reporters who are not comme il faut, but isn't Speciale being rather naive about this? He speaks as though Benedict XVI, alone among all the Church hierarchy, had not previously done all his homework - since 2001, at least - on this 'filth' within the Church. He was therefore prepared to act when he had to - but not expecting perhaps the degree and extent of the malevolence that would be directed at him personally, even if he had experienced the 'long Lent' brought on by the eruption of this issue in the USA in 2000-2002. John Paul II was visibly sick by then, and the media spared him the personal scourging they would inflict on his successor less than a decade later. They spared him the additional agony, despite his apparent obliviousness to the double life of a Marcial Maciel he would publicly praise as a Catholic model as late as 2004! If the media can respect infirmity, why can they not show the same respect for age, especially when, in this case, the man they chose to vilify and blame for every action committed by sex-offender priests and conniving bishops was the only man who had persevered for years in carrying on the burden entrusted to his office of dealing with these cases?]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2012 22:25]