WASHINGTON (DC)
Breitbart
The Archdiocese of Washington stands accused of rejecting a journalist from BuzzFeed for special press passes to cover Papal events this week in the nation’s Capitol.
BuzzFeed foreign correspondent Lester Feder and his colleagues have been trying since January to get approval to cover the Pope’s events. They were finally told flat out this week that their request had been denied and were told that the decision had been made by the press office of the Archdiocese of Washington. BuzzFeed News believes it is because a spokesman for Cardinal Donald Wuerl does not approve of BuzzFeed’s and specifically Feder’s coverage of LGBT issues.
In a letter sent yesterday to Don Clemmer of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Chieko Noguchi of the Archdiocese of Washington DC, BuzzFeed Washington Bureau Chief John Stanton lays the blame on Archdiocesan spokesperson Noguchi and points to an exchange dating back nearly a year.
Feder had approached Cardinal Wuerl at the Bishops meeting Baltimore last year and asked for a background meeting so he could better understand LGBT issues from the Church’s point of view. Wuerl agreed and asked him to contact his office to schedule a time, at which point, according to the email exchange provided by BuzzFeed to Breitbart News, Feder got the runaround that lasted months.
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