VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service
David Gibson | October 21, 2015
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Barrels of ink, digital and real, have been spilled by journalists trying to convey the gravity of the high-stakes debate on church teaching in Rome this month, as the melodrama that a closed-door Vatican gathering of some 270 churchmen almost guarantees.
The synod, as it’s called, has it all: steady leaks to the press, rumors of lavish dinners and reports of intense lobbying, plus open disagreements over doctrine. It’s a steady diet of soap opera and theology, and almost too much for any reporter to keep up with.
Which is why, if you want to know what it’s like to be a player in such an event, and in the extracurricular socializing where much of the work is done, you have to read the blog of Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge.
The 67-year-old head of the Archdiocese of Brisbane has been writing his online diary nearly every day since he left for Rome on Oct. 1, offering witty, chatty postings that provide equal helpings of dish and doctrine. It’s made him something of an Internet sensation back home and the media star of the Anglophone world at the Vatican.
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