Why covering the Vatican is a really tough reporting assignment

Summary

Consider This from NPR: Why Covering the Vatican is a Really Tough Reporting Assignment

Release Date: May 10, 2025

In this insightful episode of NPR's Consider This, host Scott Detrow delves into the intricate and often challenging world of reporting on the Vatican. Featuring an in-depth conversation with NPR's esteemed Rome correspondent, Silvia Poggioli, the episode unpacks the complexities journalists face when covering one of the world's oldest and most secretive institutions.

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1. The Unique Challenge of Vatican Reporting

Scott Detrow opens the discussion by highlighting a memorable moment from NPR's live coverage of Pope Leo's election. Without a live translation, Silvia Poggioli swiftly provided real-time interpretation, emphasizing her pivotal role in Vatican reporting.

"Peace be with all of you."
— Silvia Poggioli [00:24]

Detrow underscores Silvia's extensive experience, noting her contributions since the era of Pope John Paul II and her ability to establish NPR's voice in Rome.

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2. The Significance of St. Peter's Square

The episode begins with an art history and architecture lesson in St. Peter's Square, setting the stage for understanding the Vatican's ambiance.

"The basilica... is this colonnade that really gives it this dramatic sort of embrace."
— Silvia Poggioli [02:25]

Silvia explains how the Baroque architecture of the square, designed by the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, symbolizes the Vatican's grandeur and its historical role in significant ceremonial events. She draws a metaphor between the optical illusions in the architecture and the Vatican's often opaque communication strategies.

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3. Navigating the Vatican Press Office

Silvia shares her early experiences accessing the Vatican's press office in the 1980s, highlighting the institution's initial resistance to media outside prominent Catholic publications.

"Now things have improved a lot over the years."
— Silvia Poggioli [05:24]

She discusses the challenges faced by journalists, especially those not affiliated with major international media, women reporters, and newcomers to Vatican reporting. Silvia emphasizes the importance of cultivating relationships with behind-the-scenes personnel rather than solely relying on high-ranking prelates.

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4. Evolution of Papal Communication Styles

The episode contrasts the communication styles of Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, illustrating how each papacy influenced media interactions.

• Pope John Paul II was notably outgoing, with personal interactions even during flights, fostering a more open relationship with the press.

• Pope Benedict XVI adopted a more reserved approach, limiting spontaneous interactions and relying heavily on spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

  "He would take a few questions prepared in advance."
  — Silvia Poggioli [08:01]

  Silvia recounts the infamous Regensburg controversy, where Benedict's remarks on Islam led to global uproar. She notes how reporters sensed the impending crisis, while the Vatican seemed unprepared.

  "We never knew... It's one of the big mysteries surrounding the Vatican."
  — Silvia Poggioli [07:40]

• Pope Francis, conversely, has taken a more hands-on role in communication, often acting as his own spokesman. He engages directly with the media, announces reforms unilaterally, and participates in public dialogues with secular journalists.

  "He was absolutely his own spokesman."
  — Silvia Poggioli [09:43]

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5. Memorable Reporting Moments

Silvia shares several poignant experiences that highlight the emotional and historical weight of Vatican reporting:

• Pope John Paul II's Visit to Israel: Witnessing the Pope’s presence at the Wailing Wall and his reception in Nazareth amidst security tensions.

  "It was very big to be in these historical moments."
  — Silvia Poggioli [11:00]

• First Papal Entry into a Synagogue: Observing the groundbreaking moment when Pope John Paul II entered a synagogue, fostering interfaith dialogue.

• Pope Francis in Iran: Covering the Pope's visit to Ur, where he engaged in interreligious dialogues with Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi leaders.

  "It was pretty moving."
  — Silvia Poggioli [12:00]

These events underscore the Vatican's significant role in global religious and political landscapes, making accurate and sensitive reporting crucial yet challenging.

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6. The Personal Toll and Rewards of Vatican Reporting

Silvia reflects on the dual nature of covering the Vatican—balancing the frustration of bureaucratic hurdles with the fulfillment of witnessing historic, world-impacting events.

"I think I had some really great moments."
— Silvia Poggioli [10:47]

Her dedication to understanding theology and navigating the Vatican's dense communication protocols exemplifies the commitment required to report effectively on such a complex institution.

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Conclusion

This episode of Consider This offers a comprehensive look into the demanding world of Vatican journalism, through the seasoned perspective of Silvia Poggioli. It highlights the interplay between architecture, personal experiences, and evolving papal communication styles, painting a vivid picture of why covering the Vatican remains one of the most challenging assignments for reporters.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Peace be with all of you."
  — Silvia Poggioli [00:24]

• "Now things have improved a lot over the years."
  — Silvia Poggioli [05:24]

• "He was absolutely his own spokesman."
  — Silvia Poggioli [09:43]

• "It was pretty moving."
  — Silvia Poggioli [12:00]

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This structured and detailed summary encapsulates the essence of the episode, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and nuances involved in Vatican reporting.

Transcript

[Scott Detrow]

There was a moment during our live special coverage of Pope Leo's election that I will never forget. Leo, who up until that day was known as Cardinal Robert Prevost, was addressing St. Peter's Square in Italian, zapace sia contutti voi. It had been an open question of whether we would have a live translation. We didn't. So NPR's longtime Rome correspondent Silvia Poggioli leapt into action.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Peace be with all of you.

[Scott Detrow]

Silvia Piggioli was a KEY Part of NPR's coverage of the election of the first American pope. She's been a KEY Part of NPR's Vatican coverage since the days of Pope John Paul II. A few days before the conclave began, I took a stroll through St. Peter's Square with someone that listeners have long viewed as one of the most iconic voices in NPR history.

[Silvia Poggioli]

We're about to go into the center of the square to try to have a little art history lesson.

[Scott Detrow]

Pigoli spent decades as NPR's Rome correspondent in in addition to having one of listeners most beloved and recognizable outros, Silvia.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.

[Scott Detrow]

Poggioli helped establish the sound and standard for our news network. This week's Reporter's Notebook begins with an art history and architecture lesson. We're standing here in the square, and this is the central visual of the Vatican, but it also, the setting has played a role in so many big ceremonial events that get international attention, papal funerals, installation masses. And it seems like the setting is as much of the story as what the cardinals and the popes are saying in the setting.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Oh, absolutely. I'm not so sure if it would look half as exciting, half as dramatic without this incredible square. The basilica, which was partially designed by Michelangelo, then Bramante, many other architects. But most of all, I think it's this colonnade that really gives it this dramatic sort of embrace, this round, elliptical shape that's almost like these arms are embracing it.

[Scott Detrow]

Poggioli covered all sorts of different stories over the years, including difficult, challenging ones like the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s. But she says the Vatican was the most challenging. She wanted to take me to the middle of the square to look at that colonnade from a specific angle to illustrate that point. She guided us a few feet over and had me stand on a marble oval placed in the cobblestones just a few feet from the obelisk in the center of the square.

[Silvia Poggioli]

We're here in the center of St. Peter's Square. My father first brought me here when I was about 12 and he pointed this out to me. We're surrounded by the magnificent colonnade designed by the sculptor Bernini. We see four rows of columns that surround this elliptical square right now in the center, right near the obelisk. And from here we see only one column.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Now that's a trompe d' oeuil, an optical illusion. And that optical illusions and shifting perspectives are some of the hallmarks of Baroque architecture. And Baroque is essentially the glorification of the Catholic Church's temporal power. When I started covering the Vatican, I remembered my father's art history lesson and I began to see it as a metaphor for the Vatican's opaque, you know, sometimes secretive manner of presenting itself to the outside world, or at least to journalists.

[Scott Detrow]

Consider this. The Vatican is one of the oldest and most secretive institutions in the world. And covering the papacy of Pope Leo XIV will be a challenge for reporters. So today for our weekly Reporter's Notebook series, we will hear the tricks of the trade from one of the best to ever do it from npr. I'm Scott Detrowed. Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like npr, a show that focuses not on the important, but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants, incompetent criminals, and ridiculous science studies. And call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called. Wherever you get your podcasts, a lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now you probably need more. On up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one story can capture all that's happening in this big crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the up first podcast from npr. It's Consider this from npr. So technically, you are not supposed to record audio in the middle of the throngs of religious pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. So after our sneaky art history lesson, Silvia Paggioli and I headed back to our broadcast booth just off the square. I started our conversation by asking about a crucial part of any journalist's experience covering the Vatican. Sylvia, what was it like walking into the Vatican press office for the first time?

[Silvia Poggioli]

Well, it was some 40 years ago and it has been renovated since then, but I have to describe to you what it was like. In the early 1980s, the first thing you'd see was a life size sculpture against the wall of Christ Crucified on a TV antenna. And I really didn't feel like that was a very encouraging sign about the.

[Scott Detrow]

Wow, what a passive aggressive statement. Or maybe not passive at all.

[Silvia Poggioli]

That's the way I took it. Yeah. Now things have improved a lot over the years. There's been a much greater effort by the press office to hold press conferences with prelates and lay officials of the Vatican. But you know, direct access to Vatican officials is not easy, especially for reporters who don't work for Catholic publications, for women reporters, and for reporters who don't work for well known international publications and broadcast media, which I guess was the.

[Scott Detrow]

The position you found yourself in.

[Silvia Poggioli]

NPR was not that very well known here in Rome at that time. Now, the best access is for the Vaticanisti. That's Italian for Vaticanists. For them it's a full time beat. And they're experts at navigating the Vatican's formal and archaic bureaucracy as well as they're really good at unearthing scoops in homilies and dense official documents. But I found that sometimes the best sources were not prelates, but the sort of behind the scenes people, secretaries and people like that.

[Scott Detrow]

And what about Vatican spokespeople?

[Silvia Poggioli]

You mean Vatican spokesmen because they are always men. The first real Vatican spokesman was the Spaniard, Joaquin Navarro Valles. He was a combination spin doctor and a confidant of Pope John Paul ii. And this was before the Internet and social media, so he was in strong control of the message. For example, in 1998, I attended a press conference conference that was very hastily organized hours after a member of the Swiss Guards apparently killed Lois Esterman, his commander, and his wife, and then also himself.

[Scott Detrow]

Wow.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Navarro Valles, who was a psychiatrist by training, asserted that the alleged killer was in a state of psychological turmoil. The investigation is being handled by a Vatican magistrate rather than being handed over to Italian authorities as is the usual practice. But Navarro Vals expressed certainty that the current working hypothesis is credible. And most probably the new data coming from the post mortem will not change.

[Scott Detrow]

At all that reconstruction of the fact.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Navarro Valdes ruled out.

[Scott Detrow]

So I'm curious, did that final report follow his preview of what it would be?

[Silvia Poggioli]

We never knew. We never found out really any of the real details of exactly what happened. It's one of the big mysteries surrounding the Vatican.

[Scott Detrow]

So that's Pope John Paul ii. He's followed by Pope Benedict xvi, who in terms of communication styles, was a very different pope. How was that reflected in the press office?

[Silvia Poggioli]

Oh, he was very different. He was much Less outgoing. John Paul II had had some contact with reporters on the flights, but Benedict, much, much, much less. So he would take a few questions prepared in advance. His spokesman was Father Federico Lombardi. And Lombardi had to tackle many crises, most notably Benedict's remarks that suggested that the early spread of Islam had been accomplished through violence. Those remarks caused intense anger among Muslims and even death. And then there was Benedict's rehabilitation of a holocaust denying bishops that also caused an awful lot of uproar.

[Scott Detrow]

Is it true that there were moments in some of these controversies where the reporters covering the Vatican seemed more hyper aware of, oh, this is going to cause a big global problem than perhaps the Vatican or the Pope himself realized in the moment?

[Silvia Poggioli]

Absolutely. In the case of Pope Benedict's remarks at Regensburg in Germany, we had the prepared remarks ahead of time, and the reporters read what he was about to say. He was quoting somebody who had made these remarks centuries earlier. It was not his direct quote, but he was quoting somebody that said, made a statement that was very, very controversial in modern times in the Islamic world. And a bunch of reporters did go to the spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, and suggested that maybe he might say something to the Pope. And Lombardi said he would not approach him on that.

[Scott Detrow]

And that caused a massive, massive scandal that in many ways, Pope Benedict never fully recovered from.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Not at all. There was that, and there were others. He was really afflicted by many, many scandals of this kind.

[Scott Detrow]

So that brings us to Pope Francis, who you've noted was really his own spokesman in so many ways.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Totally. He was absolutely his own spokesman. He often caught the Vatican press office off guard, announcing reforms, appointments. He even set up his own interviews. And he gave a lot of interviews to Spanish reporters, but also to many others. He did TV interviews. Now, one of the most interesting things Francis did was he engaged over several years in a public dialogue with a leading Italian newspaper editor. It was a fascinating intellectual exchange between the leader of the Catholic Church and a very staunch secular journalist.

[Scott Detrow]

Going back to that optical illusion that we saw a few minutes ago, you're taking me through the ways that the Vatican press office changed. I'm curious, over the years, were there ways that you changed the way that you tried to cover this institution?

[Silvia Poggioli]

I had to learn a lot about theology and religion.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Yeah. I had to do a lot of research. Yeah, it was dense sometimes it was very difficult. And you had to really learn how to interpret these very obscure language and dense theological statements.

[Scott Detrow]

Did you enjoy the challenge of covering this, or was it at times frustrating or both.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Well, I think I had there were some really great moments. I think when John Paul II went to Israel and it was in front of the Wailing Wall and he, you know, put a prayer in the crack. That was a very big event. As his motorcade wound through the narrow streets, Pope John Paul was welcomed to Nazareth by singing, drumming and cheers. But the town was also filled. Israeli police and border guards, some in full riot gear. Another similar before that was when Pope John Paul II visited the Rome synagogue. Applause broke out when the pope and Rome's Chief Rabbi Eliotoa stood together in front of the Ark of the Torah. At the beginning of the ceremony, as the choir sang the Hallelujah, there were tears in the eyes of many of the it was the very first time in history that a pope had entered a synagogue. That was a very to be in these historical moments is very big. The other time was with Pope Francis on the plain of Ur in Iran. And the pope sat there with Muslim, Christian and Yazidi religious leaders. It started with recitations from the Gospel and from the Quran. To be there, you know, where the land of Abraham and to see Catholic and Islamic and religious leaders. It was, yeah, it was pretty moving.

[Scott Detrow]

That is NPR's Sylvia Poggioli. Thank you so much for telling us about this.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Thank you.

[Scott Detrow]

This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam, Noah Caldwell and Mark Rivers. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Adam Rainey. Our executive producer is Sammy. Yet again, it's Consider this from npr. I'm Scott Detrow on the Indicator from Planet Money podcast. We're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump tariffs. It's called in game theory a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy esque ring to it to what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's.

[Silvia Poggioli]

The Indicator from Planet Money.

[Scott Detrow]

Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long.

[Silvia Poggioli]

That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

[Scott Detrow]

And on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Para que sepas.

[Scott Detrow]

So you know, listen to the Planet Money Podcast from npr. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon prime members can listen to Consider this sponsor free through Amazon Music.

[Silvia Poggioli]

Or you can also support NPR's vital.

[Scott Detrow]

Journalism and get consider this [e-mail] that's plus.NPR.org.