On Saturday, July 9, Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls told NCR that the pope never had any intention of using the phrase "anti-Christian" with respect to the bombings. Navarro-Valls said he has sent a letter to the director of ANSA requesting clarification.
A senior Vatican official told NCR on July 9, however, that the phrase "anti-human and anti-Christian" had indeed appeared in a draft of the telegram prepared by Sodano. It was Sodano’s office, according to this Vatican official, who gave the draft text of the telegram to ANSA before the pope had approved it.
In this sense, the official said, ANSA would have been on firm ground to report that an early draft of the telegram contained this language. The agency’s mistake, he said, was to present the phrase "anti-Christian" as if the pope had actually said it, when in the end he did not.
An evening news program on RAI-2, one of the Italian state television networks, referred to the premature report, without citing ANSA by name, as "an incredible journalistic gaffe" on its Friday broadcast.
According to the senior Vatican official, Benedict XVI was unhappy with the outcome.
Read Previous Post