ROME (ITALY)
Crux
January 4, 2019
By Charles Collins
When Alessandro Gisotti, the interim head of the Vatican’s press office, greeted reporters on Feb. 2, he asked them for “patience” admitting he is likely to make some initial mistakes in a job with a steep learning curve.
The longtime Vatican Radio employee, who had most recently been running the social media for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, may seem an odd choice to replace the former Time magazine correspondent and Fox News personality Greg Burke, who resigned on Dec. 31.
The head of the press office has traditionally been known as the “papal spokesperson,” and since Spaniard Joaquín Navarro-Valls was appointed to the role in 1984, has been the public face of the Vatican as an institution.
Navarro-Valls, who served under both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI until his resignation in 2006, held sway during perhaps the greatest change in media since the invention of television.
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