The next two years are going to be as important for the Church as the years of Vatican II in the 1960s, during which time the Catholic Herald cemented our then 75-year-old reputation as a world leader in independent Catholic news and commentary. This was largely thanks to our brilliant and fearless Irish-born editor, Desmond Fisher, reporting from Rome for much of the proceedings.
Fisher covered the 1963 and 1964 sessions of the council for the Herald with an objective clarity, putting our readers first. At the time, it alienated a number of cardinals – including John Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster – as well as the paper’s owners. But he stuck to his guns and earned the praise of many others. The Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König, told Fisher that he learned “more of what is going on at the Council from your superb reports” than he heard “on the spot”.
Which leads us back to Rome some 60 years later. With Pope Francis’s forthcoming and much-hyped Synod on Synodality – described by America magazine as “the biggest Church event since Vatican II” – and the odds on a conclave in the next 12 months shortening as a result of the Holy Father’s failing health, it is essential that the Herald continues to provide exactly the sort of on-the-spot reporting that made our name at the last ecumenical council.
I am delighted, then, to announce that two of the world’s most respected Vatican watchers, John L Allen Jr and his wife Elise Ann Allen, have joined the Catholic Herald as our Special Vatican Correspondents. They will write exclusive topical analysis for the monthly magazine and provide agency content via Crux, the Catholic news site founded by John which he launched through the Boston Globe in 2014. The Allens join a team that includes our Rome columnist and Vatican Fellow, Diane Montagna.
Elise’s first feature for us was an interview in early July with the Holy Father’s friend Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, whom he has appointed as the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. There he described his job as enforcing what he calls “the new Magisterium”, which is a troubling concept. He was recently named as one of 21 new cardinals.
Is history repeating itself? Back in February 2001, Pope John Paul II created 42 new cardinals, including a certain Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. In October 2003, as his health worsened, a further 31 cardinals were created to help secure a conservative legacy; by the time he died, he had chosen all but five of the 135 cardinals able to vote. Pope Francis has now appointed three-quarters of the next conclave.
What is certain is that we are approaching the end of the present papacy. As John writes in these pages, this is “a consistory in a hurry” and Pope Francis, aged 86, is now clearly focused on handing on his divisive legacy to a suitable progressive. When the conclave happens, the Roman drama is likely to be a Vatican version of Succession that will grip the world’s attention – and we will be reporting from the front row.
The Holy Father has already ensured that there is a revised constitutional provision for a papal resignation, should his health continue to decline. Having said that, he has defied ominous health warnings many times, and we are looking forward to Elise’s coverage of Pope Francis’s forthcoming visits to Lisbon and Mongolia, where she will be accredited on the papal plane as a Herald co-correspondent.
John is also the author of a dozen Vatican and Church books, including a collaboration with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. At the recent Herald-sponsored CNEWA dinner in Rome, I sat next to John and Elise. We bonded not so much over the Synod of Synodality, but over our love of black pugs. We both have pairs, and photos were exchanged as Cardinal Dolan embraced John at the table, announcing, “John is the best!”
Our editorial independence – free of any episcopal control or the influence of any non-profit organisation – is of particular importance to us, as I know it is to Crux. In 1962, in his first Herald editorial as editor, my predecessor Fisher wrote that a lay-owned and independent Catholic paper had “a freedom that is journalistically necessary if it is to carry out what it conceives to be its function and which relieves the hierarchy and the clergy generally of any responsibility for opinions expressed in its columns”.
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