Religion: A Warning to the Press

When correspondents picked up application forms for new press cards at the Vatican press office last week, they were handed a little leaflet. Newsmen, the leaflet said, would be expected to maintain "an attitude completely proper regarding the Holy See and the Catholic Church." Anyone who demonstrated an "incorrect attitude" might lose his credentials.

While reporters fumed, Monsignor Fausto Vallainc, head of the Vatican press office, excused the standards as "merely a rephrasing of the old rules." In point of fact, only three journalists, have had their Vatican credentials lifted in the past 18 years—and only one lost his permanently. Vatican press...

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