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Irish broadcaster RTE and the Associated Press broke news this week regarding a two-page 1997 letter from the Vatican’s diplomat in Ireland at the time, Archbishop Luciano Storero. From there, the story traveled quickly. The letter communicates the opinion of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy about a set of proposed Irish policies for how to deal with priestly sexual abuse.
The Atlantic has a “flashbacks” feature, where the magazine highlights previous pieces. One of the more recent ones was a reflection on what the magazine had written about Pope John Paul II. Here’s the set-up:
I get most of my foreign religion news from Reuters. They consistently report on stories of global interest with an eye toward religious details. But this story left me a bit cold. It promises a lot with the headline “In France, far right seizes on Muslim street prayers.” But I never quite understood what that meant, much less whether “far right” was an accurate description of who we were talking about. It begins by describing how streets and intersections in Paris are flooded with Muslim worshipers on Fridays. They don’t have room in buildings so they pray in the street, rain or shine. No big deal to the locals, we’re told:
Last week we discussed the invention of a quote and related fraudulent framing of a story so that Pope Benedict XVI’s words on the importance of baptism became a treatise on celebrity baby naming trends. Some readers were surprised that journalists might stray so far from reality when composing their stories. Others pointed out that it happens often when the subject of the story is the Pope.
Al Jazeera was the only outlet heavily covering the growing protests in Tunisia over the last month. But the news that its president had fled the country on Friday night has been widely reported. If your knowledge of Tunisia doesn’t extend past something related to Carthage or Star Wars, there’s a lot of catching up.
I wrote yesterday about Pope Benedict XVI’s speech to the diplomatic corps, in which he called for a focus on religious liberty. That didn’t get much news coverage, but guess what is! That’s right, remarks that Pope Benedict XVI didn’t even make. And such is the state of affairs in reporting on the pontiff.
Christians are by no means the only ones targeted by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Agence France-Presse informs readers that an imam and his son were recently convicted under the law:
When Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, was assassinated by one of his body guards, we looked at some of the coverage. The big problem seemed to be the overuse of the term “moderate” without any explanation of what that meant. The problem was further compounded when “moderates” were praising the assassination. There was a story last week on NYTimes.com that did provide some additional details (and provoke some additional questions). “The Islam That Hard-Liners Hate,” by Huma Imtiaz and Charlotte Buchen looks at the political significant of 2010′s attacks on Sufi shrines.
Obviously, oil and, thus, big oil money plays a major role in the tensions between Sudan and South Sudan. Most of the current nation of Sudan’s oil reserves are in the South.
