Every papal trip usually has a kerfuffle that distracts the media from what the Vatican wants reported.
On Pope Leo XIV’s trip to South America, the kerfuffle was the plane itself.
Franca Giansoldati, the Vatican reporter for Rome’s daily Il Messaggero newspaper, complained because the pope didn’t talk with journalists during the long flight from Buenos Aires to Lima.
Leo’s flight from Argentina – his immediate predecessor’s native homeland, which Pope Francis never visited during his pontificate – to his own adopted homeland of Peru (the former Robert Francis Prevost is a naturalized Peruvian citizen) was certainly a big story.
Giansoldati said a meeting with journalists seemed planned, and that Vatican Media had laid cables and microphones down the aisle, but the pope didn’t show up (and the gear was removed).
The Italian reporter blamed the new prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, the U.S. citizen Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado.
Giansoldati called Pope Leo’s non-appearance a “mystery” and claimed Montse said, “I decided,” to keep the pontiff away from the media on the flight.
Is this just a tempest in a teacup?
In many ways, of course it is. Much of it stems from internecine conflicts among Italians in the Vatican press corps. In today’s media, those spill into the English-speaking world, where readers and commentators miss some of the surrounding issues.
The announcement of Montse’s appointment earlier this year raised some eyebrows, and the new comms chief took office only at the beginning of this month.
Montse had been the President and Chief Operating Officer of the conservative EWTN News, and had previously worked at the Becket Fund, a leading religious freedom legal institution in the United States.
She is also the first woman to serve in the post and the first non-Italian.
The Dicastery Montse now leads was formerly the Secretariat for Communication, established by Pope Francis in 2015 to consolidate various Vatican-based information institutions, including Vatican Radio, the newspaper, the book publisher, and the press office.
The consolidations – and the savings they were supposed to bring with them – have been hard to achieve in practice, while comms operations in the Vatican have continued to be dysfunctional and communications culture has changed little, for all the expense and bother.
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So, the latest kerfuffle touches a nerve and is unfolding against a broad historical backdrop.
That said, there are also practicalities involved, not least of which is that papal travel is expensive.
Journalists are required to buy first-class tickets for third-class seats. They have to get expensive rooms at hotels, and are usually bussed around, which prevents them from doing actual journalism.
These flights began under Pope Paul VI, and were big news with the charismatic Pope St. John Paul II, who started speaking to journalists on the plane. But they soon became somewhat routine, and the questions on the plane were pre-arranged and seldom newsworthy.
Pope Benedict XVI was more reserved. He usually only answered a limited number of questions, and most replies were pre-written. As the media world changed – and lost money doing so – many newspapers and television networks were seriously considering whether to keep sending people on the papal plane at all.
This changed with Pope Francis: “Who am I to judge?” was by far the most well known quote of his pontificate, and he gave it during the in-flight press conference from Rio de Janeiro to Rome in 2013.
That press conference made it important to have someone on the plane.
This is a symbiotic relationship: Those expensive tickets help cover the costs of operating the plane; news outlets pay the steep fares so their journalists can have access to the pope.
There are always tensions. Journalists are often required to be on every flight. They can’t just take the flights from and to Rome if – as is the case this time – there are multiple legs and multiple flights during a given trip.
Often, a pope won’t interact with journalists on these mid-journey jaunts. In June, Pope Leo wasn’t even on the plane back to Rome from Spain (though, in fairness, that was due to technical problems on the aircraft).
The flight from Buenos Aires to Lima was nearly 5 hours long, giving Pope Leo plenty of time to speak to reporters. The pope is also 71 years old and had lung surgery a month before the flight.
(I laughed when his doctor said soon after the surgery that he was fully able to make the journey: He obviously knew who his boss was, and a few rosaries have been said to ask that Leo wouldn’t faint during a speech.)
It would have been hard to blame him, had he simply let it be known he wanted to rest rather than gab with reporters.
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That’s why the most interesting nugget in the Il Messaggero article was the quote: “I decided.”
Montse said it, which means she owns the decision, and it means the pope let her own it.
Remember that Montse has been in the job for less than a month, and that she replaced Italian layman Paolo Ruffini, who was very unpopular at the Vatican media offices. So was Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò, Ruffini’s predecessor.
It was assumed their real role was to cut costs, not to improve the media agencies, and both of them had scandals over their heads.
Viganò got in hot water and eventually resigned after getting caught selectively quoting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 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.
Neither of them was seen as being in a position to tell a pope not to talk to journalists on the papal flight.
Last week, Pope Leo introduced Montse to journalists during the papal flight from Rome to Montevideo, Uruguay.
It was on the papal flight from Buenos Aires to Lima, however, that journalists may have begun to understand who she is.
Unlike Viganò and Ruffini, Montse has the standing to tell a pope “No.”
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
