It discusses the great GKC's particular qualification for this singular honour: his optimism - "no facile cheeriness but a deep conviction that the world was fundamentally good".

This is a significant attribute.

St Teresa of Avila asked God to preserve her "from sad-faced saints" and you only have to look about you to see that there is a lot of gloom and doom about these days to cause existential anxiety and pessimism.

Sometimes I think that Pope Francis has the only cheerful face in the Vatican.

Under-population has overtaken over-population as a future nightmare scenario, alongside the ever-present fears over climate change; there is the power and confidence of Islam compared with the western collapse of Christian belief; the unerring capacity of the new computer technology to tempt us into moral turpitude and so on.

Chesterton would have understood all this - and indeed he predicted some of the factors that have brought about the moral chaos of the western world.

But, as Howse infers, his almost mystical insight into the power of divine love to transform the world saved him from the temptation of gloom.

I learnt from Howse that Chesterton took the name of Francis of Assisi as his confirmation saint, recognising "an ascetic who fasted and did penance not because he hated the world, but because he loved it."

Chesterton was a genius - not itself a requirement of sanctity - a prophet and a great-hearted, large-spirited man.

As William Oddie, GKC's biographer has mentioned in a recent blog, the Bishop of Northampton, the Right Reverend Peter Doyle, in whose diocese Chesterton lived and died, is agreeable for someone to start the process of the writer's cause for canonisation.

Howse reflects that there might be an impediment here: "One cannot help thinking that Chesterton's reliance on his wife had an element of self-infantilisation that was unfair on her...Again, this should not debar Chesterton from heaven. But though saints have their faults - which are not to be imitated - canonising Chesterton would risk his faults being imitated by mistake."

My response to this is to say that Chesterton is inimitable. No-one is going to copy his married life. Continue reading

Image: St Peter's List

"My hope is to try and help the Holy See take the necessary steps to go in the right direction," he said after accepting what he describes as a "high risk" appointment.

Burke took on the job as media advisor to the Vatican Secretary of State — a new role conceived in the light of the Vatileaks scandal and various public relations mishaps — after turning it down twice.

The 52-year-old American has worked as a journalist in Rome for 24 years — for the National Catholic Register, Time magazine and Fox News.

A member of Opus Dei since he was 18, he is a numerary — a celibate layman who lives at an Opus Dei centre in Rome.

"When the Vatican explained to me what my role would be, the position which immediately sprung to mind was the White House communications director," he said.

"In this case, the spokesman does all the public appearances and then there is another figure who works behind the scenes to come up with the strategies: how to formulate a given message, how to get it across, when and where."

Father John Wauck, a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and a friend of the new Vatican media advisor, described him as "a lay person, from the professional world, who understands how theologians think and shares their faith….

"Plus, he's well respected and genuinely liked by the journalists in Rome."

While Burke works with the Vatican Secretariat of State, Father Federico Lombardi will continue in the role of official spokesman for the Holy See.

Sources:

Vatican Insider

National Catholic Register

Washington Post

Image: Vatican Insider

Instead of re-writing Breen's story into an intro, I'll let him tell you about it before he answers some questions about the religion beat:

"I was baptized a Catholic, but never really in any tradition other than a vague understanding of Christianity coupled with a sort of tribal pull toward the Catholic Church. My mother died when I was very young, and my father had enough bad experiences with church growing up in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago that he wasn't particularly driven to make sure my brother and I were raised as active members of the faith.

"My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.

"I quickly realized that I didn't know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to bring myself up to speed.

"This continued after I moved to the Journal Inquirer, the paper in my hometown of Manchester, Conn. By now I had discovered that I was interested not just in Catholic stories, but in religion generally. It was not only a fascinating topic, but it was one that not many other reporters were interested in covering, so I could pursue stories without stepping on any toes. "

Full Story and image : GetReligion.org

"What happened has been very unfortunate and News of the World was just the tip of the iceberg," editor-in-chief Gian Maria Vian told CNA.

Vian said that the mounting scandals involving the now defunct British paper show that ethical guidelines must be outlined for the field of journalism, as with any other profession.

The scandal makes it "evident that all information - and the Pope himself said this in his message for the World Day for Social Communication - needs a focus that allows for talk of 'info-ethics,' as bioethics is spoken of."

The violations of privacy by committed by the News of the World reporters, Vian said, show a fundamental lack of regard for the humanity of the victims.

"Before information come the demands of justice and the demands of respect for the dignity of every human person."

Vian said that L'Osservatore Romano is planning to address the scandal and the increasing need for "info-ethics" with an editorial by noted columnist Fr. Jose Maria Gil Tamayo.

Ethical criteria, he emphasized, must be respected by those in the field of journalism.

Sources

• CNA
• Image: News of the World