Media muzzle dampens Cardinals' New Evangelization effort

Media muzzle dampens cardinals’ New Evangelization effort

Friday, March 8th, 2013

Shutting down the US Cardinals’ media briefing is akin to shutting down efforts in New Evangelisation.

This is how conservative Catholic columnist George Weigel, writing in the National Review Online, describes the media blackout on Cardinals that came into force yesterday.

In the name of transparency, U.S. cardinals had held a series of parallel news briefings with the press on the issues relating to the Conclave.

The move to stop US Cardinals talking with media came like a ‘slap in the face in the midst of the Synod Hall’ reports Italian daily, La Stampa,

La Stampa reports that after eight years of mutual hostility towards each other the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano and the Camerlengo, Cardinal Bertone, yesterday, combined to stop the US cardinals talking in an open and transparent way.

Like Weigel, respected Vatican journalist and author, John Tharvis is similarly baffled.

But, writing in his Vatican Diary, he is not surprised that the day after the media blackout, the Italian papers were chock full of unsourced details from the cardinals’ closed-door general congregation meetings, notes.

Tharvis says La Stampa was full of

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Italian head of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, gave a global report on missionary challenges.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the Italian head of the Congregation for Clergy, weighed in with an overview on the priesthood and vocations.
Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini spoke about the need to choose a younger pope with sufficient energy.
Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet and U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, both Roman Curia officials, talked about the figure and role of “pope emeritus.”
The paper also noted Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola went over the five-minute limit in his talk on the nature of the church.

Calling the American Cardinals’ press conferences “the most refreshing and media-friendly source of positive information and commentary on a story that has riveted the world’s attention,” Weigel wants to know how Italian Daily, La Stampa, is able to print verbatim reports from the Cardinals’ meeting.

In rather strong terms, Weigel says Vatican master spin doctor, Fr Federico Lombardi’s explanation of the media blackout is “Baloney and not very artful baloney”.

Weigel calls the blackout a missed opportunity to explain what the Catholic Church is.

Today at his media conference, Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi said he does not accept that Italian cardinals are leaking information to Italian media.

Lombardi was responding to a question why the US cardinals, who did not leak, are paying for the sins of Italian cardinals who did and continue to leak.

Sources