Dunn made the comment at a farewell lunch for Dame Lyndsay Freer, who for so long was the voice and face of Catholic Communications in New Zealand, and latterly communications spokesperson for the Auckland Diocese.

Freer has been involved in church communication for over 37 years. The Auckland Diocese on Saturday marked her significant contribution with a light lunch for 40 people at the Pompallier Diocesan Centre.

A once regular in the nation's media, Freer modernised Catholic communications in New Zealand.

Auckland based, she fronted the Church's engagement with media reporters and journalists who regularly contacted her for comment.

Freer showed that modern communication, a subtle art, is conversational, and how something is said is as important as the substance.

An excellent judge of the mood and tone of the message, Freer knew the right touch and the media's ability to receive what she was saying.

There were many times when she did not want to comment, did not want to have her voice or her image associated with a range of topics, yet she fronted, always using the opportunity to sow a seed, make a point or simply to keep the relationship and the conversation open for the next media request.

A professional, she respected the media but in line with Pope John Paul II's catchphrase, she was not afraid.

Emeritus Bishop of Auckland Patrick Dunn led the speeches at the farewell.

Dunn told the gathering that the Church has been very fortunate to have had Freer in this pivotal role for so long.

"The Church in New Zealand was the envy of Churches in other countries," Dunn said.

He commented that other churches were astounded with what New Zealand was able to achieve in having such a competent, talented and articulate person to help explain Church positions in the media.

It was a point reinforced after lunch when a guest commented that Freer gave Catholics and Christianity comfort in their faith and helped give them reason to believe.

Dunn praised former Auckland bishop Denis Browne's inspirational move to employ Freer initially as Auckland's communications spokesperson.

Competence has its detractors

Changing Catholic communications in New Zealand to engage with the media proved a threat to some people in the Church.

Something had changed in and around the bishops' conference.

Dunn explained that there was an idea surrounding the Conference that the New Zealand Church should have a variety of voices presenting the bishop's views to the media.

"I felt at the time that this was a mistake.

"I am now even more firmly convinced that we (the bishops) lost the plot.

"The Church has lost ‘brand recognition' since Lyndsay stepped down from the national role," said Dunn.

Implying the bishops' new model of Catholic communications is a lost opportunity, he suggested it may be a case of the Church talking more to itself than engaging in dialogue with the world.

Dunn says the decision has almost removed the church from the public eye.

Accentuating the positive of the previous communication model, Dunn said Freer epitomised professionalism, competence and respect and cited a recent example of how she even dealt with a media call at 9 pm on Good Friday!

"Talkback hosts, newspaper reporters or TV news producers sometimes do not know who to call if they want a quick and always ‘immediate' comment from the Church.

"I thought it ironic that, even after her retirement, Radio NZ still phoned her at 9pm on Good Friday for some comments on how church attendances were going with the change to the Orange Covid Traffic Light.

"Lyndsay had no idea where to refer them at that hour so made a quick comment herself which was then quoted on radio news bulletins for most of Holy Saturday morning!"

"It proves my point that the NZ Catholic Church does need to rethink our media strategy," said Dunn.

Speaking with CathNews afterwards, a guest agreed with Dunn, saying the people of God are blessed with many God-given gifts and posed the question why we (the Church) are not using them.

"Seminaries teach people the likes of philosophy, scripture and theology. They encourage an interior life of prayer. Ordination is no guarantee bishops and priests have skills other than what the seminary taught them," she said.

Also at the lunch was media trainer and RNZ host, Jim Mora, who commented that people in the media who might not be sympathetic to the message respected Freer, the messenger, because of her expertise, professionalism and her manner in relating to them.

Long-time media training specialists and now friends of Freer, Brian Edwards and Judy Callingham also joined the occasion.

Pope Francis, in a 2020 message to the Catholic Press Association, urged Catholic media to build bridges, defend life and break down visible and invisible walls that prevent dialogue and truthful communication between individuals and communities.

At the initial outbreak of Covid-19, Francis commented "recent months have shown how essential is the mission of the communications media for bringing people together, shortening distances, providing necessary information, and opening minds and hearts to truth."

Additional sources

• Supplied
• Vatican News

The pope poked the Russian bear in the nose, gave a convoluted response to why women cannot be priests and even had a muddled response to a question on racism in the United States.

If I had been his press secretary, I would have been pulling my hair out during much of the interview.

I would have wanted to edit the text before it was published.

Some of his responses were noncontroversial and even inspiring — for example, on how he remains joyful and happy amid crises and troubles.

His analysis of how political polarisation is un-Christian was spot on.

He also acknowledged that it is a mistake for the church to have less transparency in dealing with abusive bishops than it has with abusive priests.

As a former editor of America, I was delighted that its outgoing and new editors got an exclusive interview with the pope and that they brought three lay colleagues, including two women, with them.

Their questions were professional, with some follow-ups that didn't allow the pope to dodge the questions.

Kudos to them.

On the Russia-Ukraine war, Gerard O'Connell, America's Vatican correspondent, asked the pope why he was unwilling "to directly criticise Russia for its aggression against Ukraine, preferring to speak more generally of the need for an end to war, an end to mercenary activity rather than Russian attacks, and to the traffic in arms."

The Vatican has traditionally tried to avoid taking sides in wars in the hope that it might become a mediator for peace.

Historically, this approach has rarely been successful.

Although in this war the Vatican has facilitated exchange of prisoner lists and even of a few prisoners, the Ukrainian and American governments have criticised the pope for not condemning Putin and Russia.

"When I speak about Ukraine, I speak of a people who are martyred," he said.

"If you have a martyred people, you have someone who martyrs them."

He went on to say that he did not specifically name Putin in his condemnations of the war because "it is not necessary; it is already known."

He might as well have said that Putin was a 21st century Nero.

He tried to avoid accusing Russian soldiers of war crimes but said that the cruellest troops were the Chechens and the Buryat, who are fighting for Russia.

These comments surely pleased Ukraine, the United States and its NATO partners, but they also gave heartburn to the Vatican Secretariat of State, which had to deal with Russian outrage.

America Executive Editor Kerry Weber, while acknowledging the pope's promotion of women in the Vatican, asked, "What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the church, but who still feels called to be a priest?"

The good news is that the pope avoided talk of "complementarity" and did not refer to women as the strawberries on the cake.

He is learning.

But he did drag out the convoluted ecclesiology of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, which describes the Petrine and Marian aspects of the church.

In the pope's analysis, the Petrine is male and less important than the Marian or spousal, which is female.

Where laymen fit into this analysis is unclear.

If laymen are included under the Marian principle, then why can't women be included under the Petrine?

Von Balthasar's theology will convince no one who supports ordaining women.

Gloria Purvis, host of "The Gloria Purvis Podcast," asked about racism in the American church: "What would you say now to Black Catholics in the United States who experienced racism and at the same time experience a deafness within the church for calls for racial justice?"

The pope seemed unprepared for the question.

He responded with sympathy and pointed out that "the church has bishops of African American descent."

Purvis did not let the pope get away with this.

"Yes, but most of us go to parishes where the priests are not African American, and most of the other people are not African American, and they appear not to have sensitivity for our suffering. Many times they ignore our suffering. So how can we encourage Black Catholics to stay?"

The pope rambled for a bit but finally said what needed to be said.

Black Catholics "should resist and not walk away," he said.

"Racism is an intolerable sin against God. The church, the pastors and laypeople must continue fighting to eradicate it and for a more just world."

Weber asked about the American bishops, but the pope wisely avoided getting into a public spat with the conference.

However, he surprisingly threw the construct of bishops' conferences itself under the bus.

"Jesus did not create bishops' conferences," said the pope.

"Jesus created bishops, and each bishop is pastor of his people."

American progressives with short memories might applaud this putdown, but they should remember how Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI, downplayed the theological role of episcopal conferences during the golden age of the U.S. conference when it was writing pastoral letters on peace and the economy.

The Vatican has always feared episcopal conferences because it is harder to deal with bishops as a group than individually.

The pope needs a better way to talk about bishops' conferences.

True, Jesus did not create them, but neither did he create lots of other things in the church, including ecumenical councils and the Vatican.

Everyone knows I love the pope, and I will defend him to my dying day.

The first interview he did as pope, also published in America, was a masterpiece in communication and evangelisation.

His recent interview comes across as a first draft in need of editing.

Perhaps it is the old editor in me that wants to make the text better.

But in editing, there is always the danger of smothering the voice of the author.

It is probably better to let Francis be Francis.

That does not mean that I will like everything he says or the way he says it, but I will continue to like him and be attentive to every word he says.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.