That question is making the rounds after the pope seemed completely unaware of the details of a Chilean sex abuse scandal, a failing that soured his recent trip there and forced him to do an about-face.

It also came up after his abrupt, no-explanation dismissal of a respected Vatican bank manager.

And it rose to the fore when he was accused by a cardinal of not realizing that his own diplomats were "selling out" the underground Catholic Church in China for the sake of political expediency.

Some Vatican observers now wonder if Francis is getting enough of the high-quality briefings one needs to be a world leader, or whether Francis is relying more on his own instincts and informants who slip him unofficial information on the side.

In his five years as pope, Francis has created an informal, parallel information structure that often rubs up against official Vatican channels.

That includes a papal kitchen cabinet of nine cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican and have the pope's ear, plus the regular briefings he receives from top Vatican brass.

The Vatican this week issued a remarkable defense of Francis' information flow and his grasp of the delicate China dossier.

The Holy See press office insisted that Francis followed the China negotiations closely, was being "faithfully" briefed by his advisers and was in complete agreement with his secretary of state on the topic.

"It is therefore surprising and regrettable that the contrary is affirmed by people in the church, thus fostering confusion and controversy," said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke.

Francis lives at the Vatican's Santa Marta hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace, where he can more easily keep his door open at all hours, and where a network of friends, informants and advisers provide back channels of information to him.

"The problem is he's the victim of the Santa Marta syndrome," said Massimo Franco, columnist for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

"The pope wanted to live there because he didn't want any filter from the secretary of state. But the other side of the coin is that he's condemned to receive quite casual information, and not always very accurate."

At Santa Marta, the pope sets his own agenda, makes his own phone calls and arranges his own visitors' schedule, often without the knowledge of the Vatican's protocol office. He neither watches TV nor browses the internet but reads the Rome daily Il Messaggero and a selection of press clippings for his non-Vatican news.

Some of his information arrives in person, some of it on paper, left for him in a red leather-bound folder at the Santa Marta front desk, brought upstairs by a Swiss Guard and handed over to one of the pope's two private secretaries.

Francis has two main gatekeepers, Monsignor Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, an Egyptian Copt who used to work in the Vatican's secretariat of state, and Monsignor Fabian Pedacchio, an Argentine priest who Francis, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, dispatched to Rome in 2007.

He also has the prefect of the papal household, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, who arranges official audiences and decides who gets to greet the pope after his weekly Wednesday general audience.

Sometimes popes suffer when their gatekeepers fail them: Pope Benedict XVI famously lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, unaware that a simple Google search would have turned up the bishop's belief that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth.

But more than his immediate predecessor Benedict, Francis still relies on a close circle of friends from his days in Argentina and as a high-ranking Jesuit to give him the pulse of what's going on.

And he can be fiercely stubborn once he has made up his mind based on information that does reach him, such as his recent dismissal of the respected No. 2 at the Vatican bank, Giulio Mattietti, who was fired without explanation at the end of the year.

In his subsequent Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, Francis blasted Vatican staff who have been sidelined, saying "they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a 'pope kept in the dark.'"

But with Chile's priest sex abuse scandal, Francis was forced to admit he had not only made a mistake, but maybe he was the one in the dark. Continue reading

Francesca Chaouqui said this during testimony at the trial of five defendants, including herself, at the Vatican.

Ms Chaouqui, a public relations expert who used to work at the Vatican, wrote further about the matter on her Facebook page.

She was writing about Italian Archbishop Angelo Giovanni Becciu, the number two official at the Vatican's Secretariat of State.

Ms Chaouqui wrote that the archbishop has staked his credibility on her going to prison, so she'll be "condemned without evidence".

She also wrote that she's "not afraid of four feet of pure evil", in reference to Archbishop Becciu's diminutive height, and that she stands by her accusations.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, stated in response: "It has become necessary — without desiring in any way to condition the action of the Court — to deny, in a most absolute way, such accusations and to state that, since they are calumnious affirmations, they are absolutely unacceptable, and subject to legal action".

Ms Chauoqui responded on Facebook that "the calumny and unacceptable thing is what the Vatican, in the figure of the substitute, is doing against me".

Archbishop Becciu's post is referred to as the "substitute" because he acts on behalf of the Cardinal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Ms Chaouqui wrote of a "dossier of lies" about her which, she stated, Archbishop Becciu received when she was hired by the Vatican three years ago.

She claimed the dossier was leaked to the press by the archbishop.

She also claimed Archbishop Becciu repeatedly called investigators during the questioning of her after her initial arrest nine months ago.

Last week, a police witness told the Vatican tribunal that, during questioning, Ms Chaouqui had admitted leaking confidential documents.

Ms Chaouqui, who is nine months pregnant, subsequently insisted she was not involved in leaking the documents.

Sources

• Crux
• Catholic World News
• Image: Crux

It has transpired that Harris' home was raided by police in November last year, when he was interviewed by police as part of Operation Yewtree, an operation into alleged sex abuse that pointed a firm finger at the late Jimmy Savile. Last month, a few days shy of his 83^rd birthday, the veteran performer was arrested and interviewed for another round of questioning. There have been no formal charges laid, but in the scheme of things, this won't matter.

All that is needed is a tag-line - in this case, "Australian-born pensioner from Berkshire", spiced with the additional "known performer", and the suspicious brigades smell blood. The Sun was so good to "out" the pensioner, a long time entertainer who had moved to the United Kingdom and became one of Australia's more known exports.

Harris over the years became a figure of mock fun and occasional mock reverence. He popularised the Australian idiom before British screens. He brought, for better or worse, the song Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, accompanied with "wobbleboard", into wide circulation. The Edwardian parlour song Two Little Boys still strikes a note with a few, while hisJake the Peg made some listeners shudder.

Harris also thrilled children with his drawing programmes. Then came age, something that can have its own impending fatality in entertainment - and the feeling of embarrassment that comes with typecast settings and boxed roles. The culture vanguard was always peering with mild mannered suspicion at him - could he really be a genuine artist, or merely a dilettante dauber? Nonetheless, networks felt they had a reliable number in programmes featuring Harris as the concerned media star with an interest in animal welfare. He was, after all, the "family" figure. Continue reading

Sources

• Binoy Kampmark in On Line Opinion
• Image: The Telegraph

Binoy Kampmark lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and blogs at Oz Moses.