VATICAN CITY
moneycontrol
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Few authors can boast that Pope Benedict helped sell their books, but the pontiff’s shock resignation has boosted interest in all things Catholic just as veteran Vatican journalist John Thavis is about to publish.
“The Vatican Diaries,” a behind-the-scenes look at the faith’s fabled nerve centre, goes on sale on February 21, just one week before the pope takes the nearly unprecedented step of quitting as the head of the world’s largest church.
Thavis, who covered the Vatican for 30 years until retiring from his post as bureau chief for the U.S.-based Catholic News Service last year, had long known Benedict believed a pope could resign and worried he might do it before the book came out.
But he says he was as shocked as anyone else when the pope announced his decision on Monday. The book is not an analysis of the soon-to-end pontificate, but the stories it tells amount to what Thavis calls “a mosaic history of Benedict’s papacy.” …
Q. In the book, you call the Vatican “a kind of showcase for missteps, distractions and mixed messages, a place where the pope is upstaged by his own gaffes or those of his top aides.” Did this come out in your daily reporting?
A. “There were some things I couldn’t say until I sat down to write a book. There were some judgements I couldn’t have expressed in news stories, and not only because I worked for a Catholic news agency. I couldn’t say in my daily reporting how disgraceful I found the Legionaries of Christ’s effort to spin or deflect criticism from their founder (Fr Marcial Maciel, who sexually abused boys and secretly fathered several children).
“I also couldn’t say how ridiculous I found it that the Vatican still feels the need to edit the pope’s spoken words to journalists, as if there was an official version that will supercede his actual words.”
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