Vatican reporter John Thavis: Sex, Lies and the Vatican

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/336-161/16369-sex-lies-and-the-vatican

Thavis also takes his readers on the papal plane, describing in rarely heard detail what it's like to fly on the Vatican chartered flight with the pontiff. But rather than focusing on the pope's public appearances, he gives details about the very unglamorous life of a Vaticanista and the often contemptuous relationship between the media and the Vatican warden, who Thavis describes as sardonic in his control over the press, effectively getting them up at the crack of dawn and herding them like cattle to waiting pens and shuttle buses.

He also spotlights the pressure the Vatican press corps is often under to walk the fine line between interpreting the pope's message without becoming a true bullhorn for the church. He gives context to the miscommunication that has dogged Benedict's papacy by explaining how this pope's handlers spent more time correcting "what the pope meant" than previous popes. On one papal trip, the Vatican press spokesman actually reworded a statement Benedict made on abortion and excommunication that Thavis felt crossed the line. "Editing Pope Benedict's extemporaneous comments had been a com­mon practice from the very first day of his pontificate," Thavis writes. "Vatican officials jus­tified it on the grounds that the pope's Italian might need cleaning up, and an imprecise or inelegant phrase should be quickly amended. The idea of a midlevel bureaucrat fine-tuning Pope Benedict's language may sound strange, but it reflects a deeply entrenched conviction that the actual words a pope pronounces are not definitive until the 'official version' is published. Usually the editing was merely annoying, but in this case it was an attempt to rewrite reality."