Tony Spence had posted tweets in reaction to religious freedom legislation under debate in Georgia and Tennessee and a gender identity measure in North Carolina.

He also tweeted about an article in another publication about gay students at evangelical colleges.

For example, a tweet he posted on March 24 stated: "LGBT protections get flushed as NC governor signs bill over #bathroomwars."

Mr Spence, who had been director and editor-in-chief of CNS since 2004, was attacked by conservative Catholic bloggers over the tweets.

The bloggers alleged that he was promoting an LGBT agenda.

These views were posted to sites like The Lepanto Institute, The Church Militant and LifeSiteNews.com

"The far right blogsphere and their troops started coming after me again and it was too much for the USCCB [US Conference of Catholic Bishops]," Mr Spence told the National Catholic Reporter.

"The secretary general [of the US bishops' conference] asked for my resignation, because the conference had lost confidence in my ability to lead CNS," Mr Spence said.

Those who know him said Mr Spence feels "shattered".

Catholic News Service is an office of the USCCB and Mr Spence was a member of the conference senior staff.

On Wednesday last week, Mr Spence attended a regularly scheduled staff story meeting at 2 pm.

Sometime later, after meeting with Msgr J. Brian Bransfield, the general secretary of the bishops' conference, Mr Spence was escorted from the conference office building without being allowed to speak to his newsroom staff.

Staff in the Washington office were told of Spence's leaving shortly after 4 pm.

James L. Rogers, chief communications officer for the US bishops' conference, sent an email memo to all CNS staff "to share news of Tony stepping down as editor-in-chief, effective today".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• NPR
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

The praise was understandable. After the spate of missteps that have come to define Benedict's nearly eight-year papacy, it seemed that the Vatican might finally be able to get a jump on the 24/7 news cycle rather than always playing defense.

But the focus on the pope's personal entry into social media (the Vatican has a general Twitter feed and Facebook page) is really a subplot to a larger, behind-the-scenes effort by the Roman curia to overhaul the Vatican's notoriously byzantine communications apparatus and head off problems that can't be glossed over by even the most appealing papal tweets.

That restructuring began in earnest this year following incessant criticism — many from Vatican allies — that Rome's hapless messaging was accelerating controversies instead of defusing them.

From Benedict's citation of an inflammatory passage on Islam's Prophet Muhammad in a 2006 speech to his rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop in 2009, the pope had become known for creating gaffes rather than preaching the gospel. Behind Vatican walls the frustration was building.

The push for a communications reboot was given fresh urgency last January, following the infamous "Vatileaks" case in which papal valet Paolo Gabriele — who was convicted in October — secretly passed thousands of sensitive internal memos to the Italian media that portrayed the Vatican as a den of poisonous intrigue.

So how is the overhaul going now that things are settling down?

"It's a work in progress," said Greg Burke, the Fox News reporter who the Vatican hired last summer in an unusually high-profile move. "I'm just aiming for baby steps at this point, trying to get things moving in the right direction. And I think they are." Continue reading

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Image: The Independent