{"id":525,"date":"2009-06-05T10:42:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T10:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo.html"},"modified":"2009-06-05T10:42:27","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T10:42:27","slug":"vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo.html","title":{"rendered":"Vatican steps back on Obama love?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Obama<\/span>Concerns that the Vatican seems to like President Obama<\/a> a lot more than the U.S. hierarchy seem to be behind a rowback of sorts as L’Osservatore Romano. As RNS’s Francis X. Rocca reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The official Vatican newspaper emphatically denied that its friendly coverage of President Barack Obama reflects any tolerance of his support for legalized abortion and embryonic stem cell research.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In reporting on some recent statements and initiatives of the president of the United States, L’Osservatore Romano certainly did not intend to express appreciation for his positions on ethical questions,” said an unsigned article in the paper’s June 5 edition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Obviously the Holy See and L’Osservatore Romano have been, are, and will be standing side by side with the bishops of the United States in their commitment to the inviolability of human life in whatever stage of its existence.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Known as the “pope’s newspaper,” L’Osservatore is under the direct authority of the Secretariat of State, which directs the Vatican’s diplomatic relations, and reportedly vets articles on sensitive topics before publication.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The paper’s coverage of Obama has been consistently friendly, and at times openly enthusiastic, since his election last November.<\/strong><\/p>\n

snip…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But according to Massimo Franco, a Rome-based expert on U.S.-Vatican relations and author of the book “Parallel Empires,” the newspaper’s statement is evidence of tension between the Vatican and American church leaders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We see that the division of labor between the Vatican and the U.S. bishops with respect to Obama is not so easy to carry out without conflict,” Franco said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On the other hand…As CNS reports<\/strong><\/a>, the Vatican media apparatus was in big love mode over Obama’s Cairo speech yesterday–joining almost everyone in the sentient world except certain conservatives. At First Things<\/em>, Elizabeth “The Anchoress” Scalia has a rambling roundup<\/a> of the corner of disgruntlement. <\/p>\n

So will any of this stop the calls for a change (Novak here<\/strong><\/a> and Hudson here<\/a><\/strong>) in the Vatican’s communication personnel? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concerns that the Vatican seems to like President Obama a lot more than the U.S. hierarchy seem to be behind a rowback of sorts as L’Osservatore Romano. As RNS’s Francis X. Rocca reports: VATICAN CITY (RNS) The official Vatican newspaper emphatically denied that its friendly coverage of President Barack Obama reflects any tolerance of his support…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nVatican steps back on Obama love? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vatican steps back on Obama love? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Concerns that the Vatican seems to like President Obama a lot more than the U.S. hierarchy seem to be behind a rowback of sorts as L’Osservatore Romano. 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Rocca reports: VATICAN CITY (RNS) The official Vatican newspaper emphatically denied that its friendly coverage of President Barack Obama reflects any tolerance of his support…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-05T10:42:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/img\/Obama%20Osservatore.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vatican steps back on Obama love? - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/vatican-steps-back-on-obama-lo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vatican steps back on Obama love? - Pontifications","og_description":"Concerns that the Vatican seems to like President Obama a lot more than the U.S. hierarchy seem to be behind a rowback of sorts as L’Osservatore Romano. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}