NCR Today

ROME -- In the teeth of what it regards as inaccurate or biased media coverage, the Vatican has traditionally adopted a posture that might be described as serene indifference: “This affair will be forgotten tomorrow, but we will still be here in a thousand years,” or so the theory goes.

Coupled with that lofty view is often a grubbier bit of PR wisdom: You risk giving a story legs simply by responding to it.

Taken together, those cautions historically have meant the Vatican rarely responds to hostile coverage, and when it does, its public statements are usually slow, measured, and parsimonious. (When a furor erupted in early 2010 over an alleged plot by senior Vatican personnel to sabotage an Italian journalist named Dino Boffo, for instance, the Vatican maintained a steady silence for 18 full days.)

Of late, however, we’ve seen a break with form, as the Vatican has instead come out swinging.

According to an Associated Press source, President Barack Obama will announce a compromise this morning on his mandate that would require religious employers to cover free birth control for women.

ROME -- In response to a report today about a secret letter from a former high-ranking Vatican cardinal warning of a plot to kill Pope Benedict XVI within the year, a Vatican spokesperson today said it consists of “ravings which in no way should be taken seriously,” and is “so incredible as to defy comment.”

The report, carried by the Italian paper Il Fatto Quotidiano, is based on a letter allegedly penned by Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, 82, who served from 1996 to 2006 as the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy.

Elected officersKampala, Uganda -- Daughter of the Sacred Heart of Mary Sister Marie Therese Diene, from Senegal, and Comboni Father Julio Ocana Iglesias, from Ethiopia, today were elected president and vice-president of the Confederation of Conferences of Major Superiors of Africa and Madagascar, or COMSAM. The group was formed in 2005 and is meeting for only its second time, in Kampala, Uganda.

A pan African group of religious men and women, COMSAM aims to offer a stronger and more united voice to Catholic issues, including religious matters and violations to justice and peace and human rights on the African continent.

The work of COMSAM represents a greater presence for the church in Africa, still viewed as a relatively young church, but one that has grown significantly in the last century.

A reader called to tell me that something was bothering her about the news coverage she has seen on Catholic reaction to the Obama administration’s mandate on contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

The mandate has only a narrow exemption for employers who are opposed to contraception. The U.S. Catholics bishops are vehemently opposed to that provision and many other Catholic leaders have joined them in opposing it.

Read Amy Sullivan, via RNS's David Gibson, who said her column "makes the most sense of anything I've read," which is about as generous an endorsement as one might expect. You'll find her column here.

ROME -- A four-day Vatican summit on the sexual abuse crisis signals “a new baseline”, meaning a new “agreed standard of the Roman Catholic Church” in dealing with the issue, according to one of the participants.

Fr. Brendan Geary, a Scottish member of the Marist order who works in the United States, defined that baseline in the following terms:

• “We start by listening to victims, and we honor their experience.”
• “We’re trying to become leaders in the world in the protection of children, not following behind others.”
• “In the words of Pope John Paul II, there is no place in the Catholic church for those who would abuse children.”

Commitment to those three principles, Geary said, “came across clearly from every part of the world” during the Feb. 6-9 event.

Geary spoke in a session with reporters on the final day of the four-day symposium, titled “Towards Healing and Renewal.” It has been held at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University, in cooperation with several Vatican departments.

ROME -- Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines spoke today at the “Towards Healing and Renewal” symposium, a four-day summit at the sexual abuse crisis held at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University and cosponsored by a variety of Vatican departments. Tagle traced some features of Asian culture that make both the understanding of sexual abuse, and the church’s response to it, different from Western trajectories.

I honestly don't need fresh reasons to feel disappointed with U.S. bishops, but the latest issue of Newsweek popped up on my iPad with something new anyway.

The magazine's cover trumpets a compelling story inside regarding "The War on Christians." Newsweek details the rise of what it terms "Christophobia" in the Arab world, which targets ancestors of the most ancient Christian communities. Terror attacks on Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle East jumped 309 percent from 2002 to 2010, the report contends.

This is the real "war on religion," with real victims, real fear, real suppression and oppression. But this same language is blithely deployed by conservative Catholics here in the United States, including many bishops.