scandals

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Guide to the mainstream media's failed attempts to report on Pope Francis-era scandals

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Guide to the mainstream media's failed attempts to report on Pope Francis-era scandals

Another month, another scandal. That seems to be the case these days with former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. 

It’s also the case when we talk about Vatican life in the tense era of Pope Francis. World without end. Amen.

The most-recent drama in Rome involves Luca Casarini, who recently took part in the Synod on Synodality as a special nominee of Pope Francis. 

Here is the key for religion-news consumers: The problem isn’t that the mainstream press has done a poor job covering this case — it’s that mainstream journalists have’t covered it at all. This fits into a recent trend in which important and, for many, troubling stories about Catholic debates, scandals and divisions are simply ignored by leaders in elite newsrooms.

The Catholic press, however, has been on this latest story, especially newsrooms with Rome-based bureaus and reporters. This is what noted Vatican journalist John Allen reported on Dec. 3 for Crux:

Perhaps under the heading that no good deed ever goes unpunished, Pope Francis today finds himself dragged into a new controversy which, among other things, illustrates that even the very best of intentions have the potential to generate heartache.

The case centers on an Italian non-governmental organization called “Mediterranea,” the head of which is a former leader in the “no-global” movement and a longtime leftist activist named Luca Casarini, who recently took part in the Synod of Bishops on Synodality as a special nominee of Pope Francis.

While saving lives unquestionably is a worthy cause, there have been accusations that the group’s motives aren’t entirely altruistic.

Currently, Casarini and five other individuals associated with Mediterranea are under investigation in Sicily for an incident in 2020 in which the Mare Jonio, without permission from local authorities, disembarked 27 migrants in a Sicilian port whom it had taken on board from a Danish supply ship which had rescued them at sea 37 days before.

The Danish company that owned the ship, Maersk, later paid Mediterranea roughly $135,000, in what the company described as a donation but which prosecutors suspect was a payoff for violating Italian immigration laws. A judge is expected to rule Dec. 6 as to whether the case should go to trial.

The press in Italy has been all over the story since the start of this month, but legacy media in the English-speaking world have not. It may be because it involves this pope and a hot-button issue such as immigration, one of the most painful fault lines in European life today.

Either way, it is the latest in a growing number of scandals that have either been ignored or downplayed in recent years. 


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View from Rome: Italian press aims to inform, but loves tabloid-style Vatican scandals

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View from Rome: Italian press aims to inform, but loves tabloid-style Vatican scandals

There’s nothing like walking down Via della Conciliazione in Rome. It’s a very long street, bustling with cars and tourists, that feeds into St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. It’s a reminder of how big and imposing the Vatican can be, at least physically, in the increasingly secular West.

Italy, however, remains a Catholic nation, at least culturally, with reminders everywhere you look.

I am back in Italy for the first time since 2018. Unable to visit in recent years because of the pandemic, I am happy to be back to visit family and watch some soccer.   

My return to Italy also gives me the chance to observe how Italian journalists cover the Vatican and Pope Francis. What this close look reveals is a press fixated less on the doctrinal battles and culture-war issues we see in the American press. Instead, it’s all about international politics, the disappearance of a young girl (more on that later) and banking scandals.  

Let me explain. Italian media very much cover the papacy as a political force (it still very much is in this part of the world) and less of a religious one. As we say here at religion, many journalists believe religion is news to the degree that if affects politics.

Scandals involving the Holy See, even ones that are decades old and unsolved, continue to intrigue readers. It’s true that culture war issues were increasingly a factor in Italy’s elections that led to Giorgia Meloni becoming the country’s first female prime minister. It’s also true that Italian newspapers are not objective — many belong to political parties — but they don’t hide that fact from readers. That’s how the press works in Europe.

The big stories the Italian press have covered lately are the pope’s recent meeting with Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky at the Vatican, the unsolved “Vatican Girl” scandal from 1983 and an ongoing trial that has revealed a series of financial scandals. Another big issue for the Vatican and Italy is falling birth rates, a story with strong religious overtones.

These stories transcend whatever political bias Italian newspapers bring to the table. They are seen as important to the country’s geo-political situation (in the case of Ukraine and birth rates).

The other stories reveal a Vatican that is very much involved in shadowy behavior — a corrupt institution that makes for attention-grabbing headlines meant to get clicks and sell newspapers. A murder mystery and alleged financial wrongdoing on the part of bishops will do that.


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Podcast: Can journalists and religious leaders learn how to talk about what 'news' is?

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Podcast: Can journalists and religious leaders learn how to talk about what 'news' is?

Day after day, year after year (this week opened year 35 for my national “On Religion” column) I receive all kinds of “press releases” from people who want me to write columns about this, that or the other.

Some folks still send these printed on dead-tree pulp, if you can imagine that. The vast majority arrive via email or in press kits (mainly for books) via UPS, Fedex or the U.S. Postal Service.

I am happy to check out most of this material. However, about 90% or more of these offerings are sent by PR professionals who appear to have zero idea what I write about or the audience for my columns. They are simply throwing cheerful digital spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

In short, they do not understand “news” — what it is and what it is not.

What can religious leaders and/or organizations do to improve their success rates with reporters like me? That was half the equation that we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here for temporary link to tune that in).

The other half? Just flip that reporter’s notebook around. How can reporters do a better job finding the right voices to include in their coverage of events and trends linked to religion? How can journalists convince clergy and other religious folks to cooperate with press coverage — especially when dealing with controversial topics and scandals?

The podcast was recorded while I was in Los Angeles for two forums hosted by the Poynter Institute under this title: “Telling the Stories of Faith and the Faithful.” The first forum was for reporters and editors, including quite a few who are not religion-beat specialists. The second day, yes, focused on talks with a small circle of religious leaders about understanding how journalists think and work.

We were talking about many of the same questions and issues on both days — only viewed from different sides of a reporter’s notebook (or smartphone, in this age). Here is a bite of the Poynter summary of the session with reporters:


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Memory eternal: Religion-beat pro Roy Larson escaped stereotypes and became a pioneer

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During the 1981-82, I spent most of my time at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign — taking graduate seminars, teaching reporting labs, writing my weekly column on rock music for the local daily and burying myself in graduate-project research.

The topic of that thesis — a condensed version ended up on the cover of The Quill — was the beleaguered status of religion writing in most American newsrooms. Over and over again, I heard editors give two reasons (in one form of another) for why they avoided covering religion: (1) Religion news was boring and (2) religion news was too controversial.

That’s the ticket. There were just too many boring and controversial religion stories out there.

Then a story broke in The Chicago Sun-Times that had everyone talking. It certainly was controversial, but no one thought that it was boring. The opening was a blockbuster, focusing on the most powerful leader in America’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese:

A federal grand jury in Chicago is investigating whether Cardinal John P. Cody illegally diverted as much as $1 million in tax-exempt church funds to enrich a lifelong friend from St. Louis.” It went on to report: “The grand jury has issued a subpoena for Cody’s personal banking records as well as one seeking financial documents of the Archdiocese of Chicago dating back to the mid-1960’s.

Church officials were not amused. A member of Cody’s legal team said that the “Cardinal is answerable to Rome and to God, not to the Sun-Times.”

The religion writer on that investigative team was Roy Larson, a former Methodist minister who became a newspaper reporter.

On one level, he fit a religion-beat stereotype that was common when I first started considering this line of work: That of the tired liberal Protestant minister who retired from his pulpit to run a newspaper religion-news section. In the case of Larson, the problem with this stereotype is that his skills as a mainstream hard-news journalist were real and immediately obvious.


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The discussion continues: You are a pastor and a reporter calls. What do you do?

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The discussion continues: You are a pastor and a reporter calls. What do you do?

This week's "Crossroads" podcast -- recorded by telephone, with me here in Prague -- is extra long and should be of special interest to clergy and other religious leaders who have ever found themselves facing a journalist who is holding a pen and a notepad (or calling on the telephone).

Now, I am not saying that journalists will not be interested in this topic.

You see, this podcast is yet another response to that urgent question raised by my colleague Bobby Ross, Jr., about how pastors should or should not respond when contacted by the press. Click here to catch up on that thread.

What do reporters think when clergy refuse to talk? Do journalists understand why so many clergy are afraid of the press?

Yes, this fear does have something to do with clergy fearing that many journalists "just don't get religion." Clergy fear mistakes. They fear reporters yanking their words out of context. Hold that thought.

In this podcast, host Todd Wilken (a radio pro and a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, at the same time) and I talked about two very specific scenarios, when it comes to a reporter requesting an interview with a pastor.

Number 1: You are a minister and you return to your office and there is a message waiting for you. A journalist has called requesting an interview. The note does not include information about the subject of the story (something journalist should share right up front, in my opinion).

Do you return the call?

Well, in this case let's say that the minister KNOWS what the story is about and knows that it's about a problem that has emerged in this church, religious school, etc. Let's say a student has been disciplined and a circle of parents is mad. It's safe to assume that the parents called the newspaper or local television station.

In other words, this is a BAD news story, from the point of view of most pastors. Should ministers return these calls?


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