IMAGE: CNS/Vatican Media
By Greg Erlandson
WASHINGTON (CNS) — What was meant to be an
intellectual tribute to Pope Francis has instead become the backdrop to the
latest tempest over transparency and this pontificate.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the
election of Pope Francis, the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, unveiled a series of 11 books focusing on the intellectual roots and
thought of Pope Francis.
Numerous theologians contributed to the
volumes, and they are being published in several languages.
In a press conference attended by Catholic
News Service, Msgr. Dario Vigano, prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for
Communication who oversees LEV, explained that he had asked retired Pope
Benedict to “write a page or a page and a half of dense theology in his
clear and punctual style that (we) would have liked to read this evening.”
Pope Benedict responded with “a
beautiful, personal letter,” Msgr. Vigano said. The retired pope explained
that he could not write a theological reflection on the 11 volumes because he
had not read them and would be physically unable to do so in time for the March
12 presentation. However, he expressed the hope that the series would
contradict “the foolish prejudice of those who see Pope Francis as someone
who lacks a particular theological and philosophical formation ‘.”
Pope Benedict said the books “reasonably
demonstrate that Pope Francis is a man with profound philosophical and
theological formation and are helpful to see the interior continuity between
the two pontificates, even with all the differences in style and temperament.”
So far, so good.
However, when the Secretariat for
Communication released a photo of the first page of the letter, two lines at
the end of the first page were blurred out, making it look as if someone had
intentionally obscured the fact that the Pope Benedict had not read the series,
and leaving only the words defending his successor.
Two days later, some Vatican watchers began
writing about the blurred photo.
At this point, the blurring, not the book
series, became the story. As reported by the Associated Press’ lead Vatican
reporter, Nicole Winfield, “The Vatican admitted Wednesday that it altered
a photo sent to the media of a letter of retired Pope Benedict XVI about Pope
Francis. The manipulation changed the meaning of the image in a way that
violated photojournalist industry standards.”
Sources at the Vatican explained that the
letter itself was never intended to be made public, which was why the second
page was obscured in the carefully staged photo. One source called it a “photo
illustration.”
U.S. photojournalists adhere to strict
standards regarding any sort of manipulation of a photographed image. AP norms,
which are followed by Catholic News Service, state that “no element should
be digitally added or subtracted from any photograph.”
Whatever the intention on the part of the
Vatican Secretariat for Communication, the obscuring of a portion of the letter
suggested something they did not want everyone to see. Read in this context,
Pope Benedict could be seen to be qualifying his generic support for the
publication of the series.
For those who attended the press conference,
the context of Pope Benedict’s comments was clear, and the fact that Msgr.
Vigano read out loud the lines that were subsequently obscured in the image makes
the incident sound more like a matter of poor judgment than deception.
The controversy comes on the heels of the
publication of Pope Francis’ World Communications Day message, which criticized
the phenomenon of “fake news,” defining the phrase as “false
information based on nonexistent or distorted data meant to deceive and
manipulate the reader.”
The entire incident is a reminder that in a
media-sophisticated age, with a media-omnipresent pope, the Vatican
communications apparatus must be committed both to transparency and to best
journalistic practices. Anything less is a disservice to the church.
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Erlandson is director and editor in chief of
Catholic News Service.
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