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Country Weekly. Located in a three-story, stone-and-brick building just inside the Vatican City's walls, L'Osservatore exudes less the atmosphere of an afternoon daily than of a country weekly. The paper normally goes to press around 3:30 p.m. but will hold for an hour or longer if a papal announcement is expected. The twelve editorial staffers, who include both laymen and priests, rarely worry about deadlines; if they miss one day's edition, they merely put their copy in a drawer until the morrow.
All of L'Osservatore's editorial staffers are Italian and, except for the priests, are considered career journalists. They are chosen mainly through personal contacts with the Vatican. L'Osservatore practices little beat reporting as such. If the occasion arises, such as a special papal appearance, a staffer may be sent to cover it. But generally L'Osservatore's commentaries are put together without benefit of firsthand reporting.
Manzini, a veteran Catholic journalist and former Christian Democratic member of Italy's Parliament, was appointed to the job by Pope John. Under his leadership, the paper has made a few changes in style. Stories about papal pronouncements now read "the Pontiff said" rather than "as was heard from the august lips of the illuminated Holy Father." In appearance, though, the paper has changed only slightly since it was founded in 1861. Its long, grey columns of type are filled with stultifying ecclesiastical newsnotes under such headlines as FIRST CATECHISTS OF THE MARUDI TRAINING CENTER IN SARAWAK.
Lack of Impartiality. Far more serious is the fact that L'Osservatore has not changed to reflect the new, mercurial character of modern Catholicism. During the Second Vatican Council, L'Osservatore generally carried only the official communiqués issued after each day's session, which were masterpieces of noncommunication. The paper has not published the full texts of the resolutions on Humanae Vitae adopted by the episcopal conferences of the U.S., Canada, France, Belgium and The Netherlands—all of which cited the role of individual conscience in the question of birth control. Instead, L'Osservatore has published excerpts from the statements praising the encyclical, thus giving the impression that the episcopal conferences were in full agreement with the Pope. Other manifestations of Catholic ferment, such as the theologians' petition for freedom, are simply ignored or referred to obliquely in articles by conservatives of the Roman Curia attacking Catholics who challenge papal authority.
The paper's editors readily admit to their lack of impartiality. "Freedom of the press is one of the natural and fundamental rights of the human person," declares L'Osservatore's second-in-command, Federico Alessandrini, 63. "But the church does not admit the same degree of liberty for the true and the false, for the moral and the immoral." Editor in Chief Manzini defends his approach to the birth-control controversy with a particularly beguiling argument. Criticism of Humanae Vitae has been played up so much elsfewhere, he maintains, that L'Osservatore must be one-sided in order to strike a balance.