One of the biggest news stories to hit the Vatican this year broke on Tuesday when Pope Leo XIV appointed Maria Montserrat Alvarado, currently President and Chief Operating Officer of EWTN News, as Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication.
Alvarado will replace Italian layman Paolo Ruffini, who took the role in 2018. She is originally from Mexico but became a U.S. citizen in 2008. Before working at EWTN, she worked at the Becket Fund, the leading religious freedom legal institution in the United States.
Although there has been a lot of chatter about Alvarado’s appointment due to the conservatism of both EWTN and Becket, little attention is being paid to the current situation affecting the Vatican’s communications offices.
I worked at what was then Vatican Radio from 2001 to 2017, and left shortly before Ruffini’s appointment.
The Dicastery for Communication was formed in 2015 and replaced the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. However, unlike the Council, the Dicastery had power.
Until the reforms under Pope Francis, Vatican media was not centralized. The L’Osservatore Romano was the Vatican’s daily newspaper; Vatican Radio was a Jesuit-owned operation; the Libreria Editrice Vaticana – the Vatican publishing house – didn’t just put out papal statements, but actually published other theological books; and so on.
These were not government offices, and what they put out were not “official” statements. This wasn’t always clear when reading a newspaper in the U.S. or Britain, when a bad movie review in L’Osservatore could be reported as “Pope condemns filmmakers,” but that is neither here nor there.
The point is: This reinforced the idea that the Holy See and Vatican City State were actual independent sovereign bodies. The Vatican had a newspaper, it had a radio station, and it had a publishing house.
In fact, L’Osservatore Romano was formed in the waning years of the Papal States and existed before Rome was taken over by the newly formed Italy.
The Holy See Press Office was separate and served as the “official voice” of the Vatican state apparatus.
These various institutions, however, were being battered by the rapid changes in the wider world, where print was dying and radio news was being taken over by other media including podcasts.
More importantly for many at the Holy See, the communications apparatus was very expensive, especially Vatican Radio, which broadcast in dozens of languages and required hundreds of employees.
The way the Dicastery was formed pointed to the idea that it was just a cost-cutting operation overall. Employees were often treated badly, especially non-Italian desks who discovered their jobs as journalists were being turned into translators dealing with official Italian press releases.
Ruffini was very unpopular at the Vatican media offices, as was Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò, Ruffini’s predecessor.
Both had scandals over their head.
Viganò got in hot water and eventually resigned after getting caught selectively quoting the pope-emeritus and doctoring a photo to conceal his selective quotation.
Ruffini faced searing criticism and sustained scrutiny for his dicastery’s continued use of images by disgraced artist-priest and one-time Jesuit, Father Marko Rupnik, after allegations of serial abuse against multiple victims came to light, and for his 2024 defense of the policy, which continued even after Pope Francis ordered the case against Rupnik reopened.
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Many staff members quit (including myself and our Managing Editor, Christopher Altieri) even before the scandals hit. Reports are that many communications offices are facing toxic working conditions.
“Pope Leo XIV will have to find a way to make economies. He will need to galvanize a demoralized workforce,” Altieri writes in his book, Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform.
“He will need to identify leaders who think with the mind of the Church, understand the message focus of the reigning pontiff,” he continues, “see what a vast and irreplaceable treasure they have in the rank and file of workaday professionals staffing the communications apparatus, and are adept not only at the use of new technologies but comprehend their logic.”
“Leo,” Altieri writes, “will need to put such leaders in place, find them the resources they need, and then get out of their way.”
It also bears mention that the old, decentralized system had many benefits, which could be recovered and adapted even in the new system.
Cardinal Walter Kasper knew this very well, and could expertly play the game when he served as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity from 2001 to 2010.
A document issued by the Press Office was “official,” while a piece in L’Osservatore Romano had weight. A comment made to a Vatican Radio journalist after a meeting, well, it meant more than a statement made to The Guardian newspaper, but it was still “just a comment.”
In the current apparatus, everything seems to be coming out of the Press Office.
Although the Dicastery has compromised the independence of the Vatican’s various press bodies, Alvarado should certainly understand the issue.
EWTN News includes print newspapers, radio and television stations, podcasts, and other media. While integrating them in many ways, they continue to hold their unique character.
Given the current discord in Vatican-owned media, her new leadership will quickly be embraced if she offers a vision grounded in journalism rather than cost-cutting.
She must also avoid the scandals that were the own-goals of her two predecessors.
In Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform, Altieri notes the reason Alvarado needs to play her new role the right way.
“If people cannot trust the pope’s own communications apparatus to give it to them straight—at least, not to give it to them crooked—then they will have a hard time trusting not only the pope but any churchman and indeed any Christian,” he writes.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
