The nightmares of preparing for a papal visit
The next time a journalist tells you that preparing for a papal trip is a nightmare, you might want to take it as a literal statement.
From applying for media credentials to planning preview stories, assigning coverage to purchasing additional equipment, it’s been nonstop since Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s representative to the United States, announced the papal visit in November. And that does not even touch upon security screening that journalists must go through for the first papal trip to the U.S. in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
CNS Visual Media Manager Nancy Wiechec dreamed that a USCCB employee insisted that he needed a mug shot — literally — of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He insisted he needed a photo to reproduce on coffee mugs, immediately. When Wiechec pointed out that the pope was arriving in the U.S. the following day, the employee grew belligerent.
One USCCB staffer who has been working on papal trip preparations dreamed that when Pope Benedict arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, she was the only person there to greet him. She said that as she searched frantically for the welcoming dignitaries, she assured the pontiff that people would come, but they were stuck in D.C. traffic.
I realized that I might have shared too much of my office tension when my husband announced his nightmare: He arrived at the office late one night during the papal trip to take me home from work. I was the only person standing in front of the building when, suddenly, Secret Service agents surrounded us and demanded identification. I had the proper ID, but he did not. So, he recounted, I took the car and waved goodbye, while he was hauled away in a horse-drawn paddy wagon.
As the trip approaches and the stress increases, you might think we wished we were not involved.
In your dreams! This is the kind of thing journalists live for.
Anticipating what the pope might say (Part 2)
With all the media speculation on what the pope might say in America next month, there’s a story of ours that’s not getting the attention it deserves. CNS Rome bureau chief John Thavis last week wrote that one need look no further than Pope Benedict’s Palm Sunday Mass homily for themes he’ll likely address here. (Here’s our first-day story on what the pope said that day.)
Thanks to the Internet, it’s been fairly easy to find both the media speculation and the Catholic blog reaction, as well as other reports in the Catholic press on the trip. One Catholic blogger gave our Thavis kudos for another story he wrote — a profile of the enigma Benedict XVI is for many non-Christians. (Scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry for an analysis of our story.)
I may sound like a broken record (and my use of that analogy probably betrays my age), but we’d like to think that with three reporters permanently stationed in Rome, CNS is the place to look for both the best Vatican coverage and the best coverage of what this trip really means for America and for Catholicism.
Anticipating what the pope might say
The Washington Post last week had a Page 1 story headlined “Catholic College Leaders Expect Pope to Deliver Stern Message.” And while no less an authority than the GetReligion blog called it “a pretty solid report,” it also warned how, as the trip gets closer, reporters may ignore the main purposes of such a pastoral visit (i.e., Jesus, the Eucharist, holiness) to report what they feel are the “real” (i.e., “anything that can be seen as affecting politics and, thus, real life”) issues.
It didn’t take long for questions like those to be raised about the Post story (which also is appearing in papers that subscribe to the Post’s news service). The president of The Catholic University of America, Vincentian Father David M. O’Connell, wrote a letter published today taking the story to task for stirring up a controversy to make headlines:
The suggestion that the pope is coming to the United States with a hammer for Catholic educational leaders is not only premature but also prejudicial. Instead of condemning Catholic universities and colleges for what may be perceived as failures — and failures do exist — the pope might very well thank Catholic educational institutions for being beacons of light in a society that sometimes prefers darkness.
Predicting what this pope might say or do is always a tricky business. His first encyclical, after all, wasn’t about church doctrine or wayward Catholics but about love as a gift from God. Perhaps the Post headline would have been more accurate if it had not speculated on what Catholic college leaders expect the pope to say but simply reported on what some in the church want him to say.
Catching a glimpse of the pope in U.S.
Today’s announcement of the Vatican’s official program for next month’s U.S. papal trip includes information on where you might be able to catch a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI in the popemobile if you don’t have tickets for a papal event:
– The first use of the popemobile on this trip will be when the pope leaves the White House at noon April 16 en route to the apostolic nunciature, a distance of about three miles. A major traffic nightmare is certainly a possibility since the White House is smack in the middle of downtown. The precise route was not announced.
– Later that same day, according to the schedule, he’ll arrive at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the popemobile for his meeting with the U.S. bishops. Again, no precise route was given.
– The next afternoon, after he meets with Catholic education officials at The Catholic University of America in Washington, he’ll use the popemobile to go to the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center for his meeting with representatives of non-Christian religions. That trip will be fairly short, since the university and the JPII center are more or less across the street from one another.
– The lone New York popemobile trip will be on Saturday, April 19, after a noon lunch with Cardinal Edward Egan. That trip from the cardinal’s residence to the residence of the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations is about a mile.
Blogging on the theme of the papal visit
The USCCB today announced the launching of its papal visit blog, “an inside view of papal visit preparations, views from the pew, and reflections on the meaning of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States.”
One of those reflections is a look at the trip’s theme, ”Christ Our Hope.” But this is not your ordinary (read: boring) essay on the philosophical or theological meaning of three words that many who follow the trip won’t even remember. Instead, Helen Osman, USCCB secretary of communications, tells a real-life story of Christian hope:
“Christ Our Hope:” Seems like a safe theme for the 2008 papal visit, doesn’t it? Hope is a nice word; the politicians have grabbed on to it; it’s a great Scripture for newlyweds.
But hope can be a very dangerous word, if you really believe in Christian hope. Just ask Martha Sweed Walker.
Read on to discover what it can really mean.
What should the pope say in America?
At least two CNS clients are beginning to explore what Pope Benedict might say and what he might find during his U.S. trip., while a third blogs about those questions.
– The National Catholic Reporter published the first of what it says will be four essays leading up to the papal visit. In the first, professor Richard R. Gaillardetz imagines a different kind of papal visit from JPII’s trips, one that would be largely a fact-finding mission that would show that “the American religious scene is not the same as that in Western Europe.”
– The National Catholic Register blogged this week about the Gaillardetz piece and pointed to an earlier papal-visit preview piece by Catholic journalist Russell Shaw, who wants to give the pope “an honest picture of the real state of American Catholicism behind the ecclesiastical Potemkin Village façade that will be on display.”
– One of America magazine’s blogs is asking readers to weigh in on what the pope’s message to America should be. A sampling of responses, it says, will be published before the trip.
As we often say on the bottom of the first take of a breaking story, more to come …
New resources for preparing to welcome the pope
As excitement builds in the run-up to the pope’s April trip to the United States, we’d like to think that we have some of the best insights into who Pope Benedict is, what he’s going to find in his visit to America, and what he’ll likely do at some of his stops.
And now you can read some of those insights on our papal trip page. Our paying clients have had many of our advance stories, photos and graphics for almost two weeks (with more to come) as they plan their preview editions before the visit. But we’ve also posted some of the stories here to help convince you that Catholic News Service is your best source for reliable coverage of the church, especially from our award-winning Rome bureau.
Check back here often because we will be constantly updating this page with the latest developments and with more backgrounders on the trip’s implications.
On the page, we’re also providing additional insights into the trip by highlighting and linking to stories in Washington’s Catholic Standard and in Catholic New York, the on-the-scene archdiocesan newspapers that plan their own extensive coverage of the trip.
Also, don’t miss what some of our other clients are doing with their own special papal visit pages on their Web sites. For instance:
– Our Sunday Visitor also has a new papal visit page. Among its unique features are a place to compose your own prayers for Pope Benedict (also available on Facebook if you’re a member), another page where you can download a free papal prayer card, and a third page where you can order pamphlets for your parish on Pope Benedict and the history of the papacy.
– The National Catholic Register has a new blog on the pope, not just for the U.S. trip but for his visit to Australia this summer for World Youth Day. Called “The World Meets Benedict,” the blog is located at the easy-to-remember www.pope2008.com.
Is this ‘The Year of Benedict’?
Will 2008 be the year of Barack Obama? Or perhaps, for entirely negative reasons, it will be the year of Roger Clemens. Or, how about Benedict XVI?
You might expect that a Catholic newspaper would choose the pope, but you might be impressed at how the National Catholic Register comes to that conclusion. In an editorial in the current edition, the paper says that people may underestimate the impact of Pope Benedict’s visit to America in the same way that they underestimated the impact of Pope John Paul II’s trip to Toronto in 2002. “When Pope John Paul II visited Toronto in 2002, the media made the mistake of expecting the visit to be no big deal. How wrong they were,” it says.