ROME
dotCommonweal
March 7, 2013,
Posted by Dominic Preziosi
Leading stories on a slow news day: “Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi has announced that no date for the papal conclave has been established,” while rumors of a Monday mass for “election of the pontiff” are not true. And, the final electing cardinal has landed in Rome; he is “Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man from Vietnam, and his arrival brings the College of Cardinals to its full count of 115.”
The ban on on-the-record interviews was supposed to plug leaks to the press, but John Thavis reports on the unsurprising results, noting that “the Vatican’s communication culture remains one of back-channel sources and speculation,” as evidenced by the fact that Italian papers today “were chock-full unsourced details from the cardinals’ closed-door” meetings. (A good example from earlier this week: La Stampa’s piece headlined “The Perfect Next Pope: A Secret Guide From Anonymous Cardinals,” in which one unidentified Vatican source is described “taking the time to lay out” his thoughts in a letter “written with an old-fashioned silver fountain pen.”)
Thavis says another story line (aside from the apparent lack of cohesion and focus among cardinals) may be the Curia’s surprise at the “unexpected activism” of the U.S. contingent of cardinals—and the consequent renewed attention to potential American candidates like Timothy Dolan.
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