Events last week suggest that the Vatican’s prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Mgr Dario Edoardo Viganò, has a more complicated relationship with the truth than one would want in a man serving as one’s communications tsar.
The Vatican’s decision to release the letter Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote to Mgr Viganò is not the end of the embarrassing mess of a story dubbed “lettergate”, which continued to dominate headlines through the weekend and into this week. The full text of the letter does, however, resolve some of the story’s disputed points, and in a manner that does not reflect well on Mgr Viganò.
The story broke on Monday last week when Mgr Viganò read portions of a letter from the Pope Emeritus during a press conference presenting an 11-volume series of books on the theology of Pope Francis being brought out by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (LEV) – the Vatican publishing house, once an independent outfit, now under the umbrella of the Secretariat for Communication – as a pricey limited edition box set (€100 per box).
Mgr Viganò wanted to nab several pigeons with one throw, but most of all he wanted a publicity bump for his books, on the back of an endorsement from none other than the Pope Emeritus, who in his letter responding to Mgr Viganò’s solicitation affirmed the “interior continuity” between his pontificate and that of Francis. That claim is frankly rather pedestrian: interior continuity is built into the Petrine office. Saying so sounds nice, but does not mean much. The Pope Emeritus in his letter also decried the “foolish prejudice” of those who see Francis as an intellectual lightweight and Benedict as a bookworm locked in an ivory tower. That remark doesn’t prove much of anything, either, except perhaps that a 90-year-old retiree can still knock down straw-man arguments.
For a few hours on Monday afternoon, it looked like Mgr Viganò was going to get what he wanted. Supporters of Francis were giddy, and critics of Francis momentarily in retreat, while befuddled and increasingly wary reporters scrambled to figure out what the story really was.
It quickly emerged that the prefect had read more fully from Benedict’s letter at the press conference than he had quoted from it in the press release accompanying the launch. Crucially, his press release also omitted a significant detail from the Pope Emeritus’s letter: namely, that Benedict had not read the books and was not inclined therefore to comment on their theological content.
Then AP discovered that the Secretariat for Communications had altered the still image created for publicity purposes that included the books and the letter, but blurred the lines in which the Pope Emeritus began to say he had not read the books and would not be endorsing them. The manipulation violated AP’s industry-defining standards of professional ethics. That is when the real trouble started for the prefect.
The big kicker came on Saturday, though, when the Press Office of the Holy See released the letter from the Pope Emeritus to Mgr Viganò in full. Then we learned that Benedict had expressed “surprise” at the LEV’s decision to include a particular theologian among the contributors to the series: Prof Peter Hünermann, “who, during [Benedict’s] pontificate, drew attention to himself for having been at the head of anti-papal initiatives”. Earlier in his career, Hünermann had been a major critic of St John Paul II’s actions towards dissenting theologians and “in relation to the encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor attacked in a virulent way the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of moral theology”.
“I am certain,” Benedict concluded his response to Mgr Viganò’s request for an endorsement, “that you will have comprehension for my refusal and I salute you cordially.”
Apparently, Mgr Viganò did not even understand that the Pope Emeritus was refusing his request. He certainly showed no compunction when it came to using the convenient portions of Benedict’s letter to construct a highly misleading narrative and sell it to the press (who are usually quite willing to help officials on their beat promote their projects, but do not ever take kindly to being hoodwinked).
If Mgr Viganò did not understand that the Pope Emeritus was refusing his request, he is incompetent. If he did understand that the Pope Emeritus was refusing his request, his use of the letter was disingenuous at best. In any case, his behaviour in this affair has been neither candid nor forthright with the broad public. That is a problem for Pope Francis, if only because he cannot afford to have a man overseeing the complex reform of Vatican media who cannot even manage a book launch. That Mgr Viganò apparently believes his job involves the construction of misleading narratives to suit his purposes does not help matters.
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