PR and the Pope

You’ve no doubt heard by now: Pope Benedict, for no good reason, welcomed an anti-Semitic bishop back into the church’s good graces. Only that’s not what happened, and the Vatican’s PR failures only made things worse.

From USA Today
By Philip F. Lawler

"We didn't control the communications," lamented Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Jesuit priest who heads the Vatican press office.

That was putting it mildly.

By now the whole world knows — or thinks it knows — the story behind Father Lombardi's lament. On Jan. 24, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of four bishops from a traditionalist group known as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). Within hours of that announcement it emerged that one of those prelates, Bishop Richard Williamson, had questioned the severity of the Holocaust during a recent television interview. Jewish leaders and editorial writers erupted in understandable outrage, and what began as an effort to heal a rift within the church became an ugly public dispute.

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