A July 28 declaration, plus an accompanying note listing instances when John Paul II had in fact spoken out about terrorism against Israel, was issued by the Press Office of the Holy See. For that reason, most observers assumed the material had been prepared by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesperson.
[...]
A senior Vatican source told NCR on July 30, however, that Navarro was not the author of the documents. In fact, according to this source, the first time Navarro saw them was on the papal plane bringing Benedict XVI back to Rome on July 28 from his vacation in Val d'Aosta, after they had already been released.
According to this source, the documents were prepared by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the official in the Secretariat of State responsible for relations with governments -- in effect, the pope's foreign minister. They were then released under the aegis of the Vatican Press Office.
This vindicates Mr. Navarro-Valls of the charges made against him in this instance. Mr. Allen then points out how this would be the third instance that State has meddled and caused much controversy, starting with the Maciel press release back in May then the 'anti-Christian' remark on the London Bombings in July.
As Rocco at his blog likes to point out and as I noted a long while ago here, State is quite active in its turf war. As Rocco pointed out the other day, with the CDF man now in charge, they seem to be going out in a blaze of glory.
No comments:
Post a Comment