The U.S. mainstream press covers the Vatican very much like it does Washington, D.C. The parallels are similar, but there is a pope instead of a president, a College of Cardinals rather than Congress and believers, not voters.
The three — pope, cardinals and believers — are not political entities. Although there is overlap with politics, there is a lot more nuance to the Catholic church that many reporters often miss. As we say here at GetReligion, politics is the true faith in most newsrooms. Politics is real. Religion? Not really.
The press also gets very, very, very excited when it comes to the election of a new pope. It is, after all, a global news event and a type of power struggle the press thinks that it can cover like it does a political election. That’s something the press understands better than complicated things such as doctrine, tradition and history.
The big difference is that you never know when a pope will either die or, as of late, resign. In 2013, Benedict XVI did just that and gave up his post. It was a surprise, but not one that caught everyone off guard.
For example, U.S. newspapers and TV networks plan years ahead for a papal election. I wrote a feature that ran in the New York Post in 2001 on just that topic. Here’s how that story opened:
Ghoulish as it may sound, TV is already making elaborate – and expensive – plans for covering the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the selection of his successor.
The pontiff’s frail health was apparent during Easter Sunday services eight days ago – and it has pushed news organizations around the world to renew preparations for the inevitable.
Apartment-building roofs and hotel terraces surrounding the Holy See are suddenly a battle ground as dozens of news organizations try to outbid each other for places where they can be first to capture on camera the historic puff of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel – signaling the election of a new pope.
Italians are calling the jockeying for space the “War of the Terraces.”
Pope Francis’ colon surgery in July fueled speculation that he could be near death or contemplating to resign. Much of this speculation — indeed most of it when it comes to the papacy — comes from Italian newspapers. The papacy is a very big beat at some dailies, akin to covering the queen in England, and the place where many stories are floated in order to get a reaction from both the public, but mostly Vatican insiders.
There was talk of an “August surprise” — as John Allen noted in Crux — where Francis would be “doing or saying something that shakes up the status quo.” That’s something we know this pope hasn’t been afraid to do.
The Italian press certainly expected some sort of surprise, as outlined by the blog Joan’s Rome, and that speculation swirled around Pope Francis choosing to resign. This is a section from that blog:
It is not the first time in the past 8 years that a resignation by Pope Francis was “imminent” or “on the horizon.” The resignation of a Pope, a new conclave, the existence together of two possible emeritus popes, all of this is an amazing hypothesis. Now, some are saying this is a hypothesis closer to reality.
Pope Francis has spoken often about his papacy being “a brief one.” What does ‘brief’ mean to Francis? A couple of years? Something less than 10 years?
Obviously, Pope Francis’ July 4 colon surgery led a lot of us, media and faithful alike, to look at the Holy Father in a new way. I will confess that I, in particular, followed his surgery and post-op period with a great interest because I had a similar, though far more serious, operation a number of years ago. I remember what followed that operation for many, many months. Even now, all these years later, certain affects of that operation remain.
However, if you look at Pope Francis now, we see a Pope that has, at least outwardly, recovered well.
That wonderful recovery did little to quell speculation of the pontiff’s resignation.
Speculation is, after all, the lifeblood of the Italian press. Newspapers in Italy write stories that answer questions nearly as much as they pose them. Whether the 84-year-old pontiff would resign was something they were openly asking, especially after there was talk that he would soon release a document on the role of an emeritus pope.
The Italians weren’t alone. The Washington Post, on July 9, ran a news story under the headline, “Pope Francis’s surgery adds urgency to questions about the remaining years of his papacy.” This is the key section of that story:
Francis is nearly a decade past the point when Catholic bishops are asked to turn in their resignation letters. He has already been pope for longer than Benedict XVI, and in December, he will turn 85. Since the beginning of the 1800s, only one pope — Leo XIII — has reached age 86 while still in the chair.
Vatican watchers roundly agree that Francis is not close to stepping down, and instead may push into historic territory, at a time when humans — including popes — are living longer and longer.
But many also say Francis seems like he would be open to eventually resigning, as Benedict did, rather than holding on as a weakened or even incapacitated pontiff, as John Paul II did in the early 2000s.
The clues are many. In 2014, Francis said that Benedict — the first pope to step down in 700 years — had “opened a door” for other pontiffs to follow suit. The next year, he said in an interview with a Mexican television channel that Benedict “should not be considered an exception,” and he predicted that his own tenure would be “short,” somewhere between two and five years.
The latter prediction has proved false: Francis has already been pope for eight years. But more recently, he told an Argentine doctor and journalist, Nelson Castro, that he imagined himself dying in Rome as pope, “either in office or [as] emeritus.”
The article does quote many with knowledge of the Vatican, but again there is little here. The use of phrases such as “open to eventually resigning” does little to tell readers what is really happening here.
Instead, we get conjecture.
The pope did finally deliver his “August surprise” and it wasn’t much of one: He isn’t resigning after all.
Speaking with Spanish Radio COPE on Aug. 30, the pope used the interview to address his health and the rumors of an upcoming resignation.
This is how Crux covered the interview:
Asked about his health, Francis said, “I’m still alive,” and then leaving jokes aside added that a “nurse saved my life, a man with a lot of experience. It’s the second time a nurse saves my life. The first one was in 1957.”
The first time took place in Argentina, when the pope was a young seminarian, in the hospital with pneumonia. An Italian nun, defying the doctor’s orders, decided to change the medication the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio needed. The pope has referred to this episode on several occasions. …
In recent public appearances, he seemed fully recovered, but in an audience with Catholic legislators during the weekend he began his speech by apologizing for the fact that he would remain seated while reading his speech, arguing that he’s still recovering from his surgery.
When pressed about a possible resignation, Francis said: “Whenever a pope is sick, there’s a breeze or hurricane of conclave,” referring to the process through which popes are elected.
Now that those rumors have been out to rest, at least for the time being, Pope Francis enters the next few weeks with a packed schedule. He is expected to travel to Hungary and Slovakia in the coming weeks.
The rumors will certainly bubble up again, but a ceasefire in the “war of terraces” would make for some better news coverage of this pope.
FIRST IMAGE: Photo of Pope Francis courtesy of the Vatican press office