ROME
National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 7, 2013
Rome —
Impose silence, and it seems a press secretary gets more questions he’d rather not have been asked.
The Vatican’s daily press briefing Thursday about the cardinals’ meeting covered financial and governance matters and even the role women play in conclave preparations, but questions kept coming back to one topic: Why a series of popular briefings given by the U.S. cardinals were canceled.
The cardinals met Thursday for the fifth time since Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. They are meeting daily before entering the conclave, the secret meeting where they will elect the next pope.
While a spokesperson for the U.S. bishop’ conference said Wednesday the Americans canceled their briefings because of concerns of leaks of confidential information in the Italian media, those leaks continued Thursday.
Several Italian papers Thursday carried detailed reports, attributed to confidential sources, of what had happened in Wednesday’s meeting, including which cardinals had spoken, what they had said, and whether they broke a five-minute limit on talks.
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