The director of the Press Office of the Holy See is changing, after a decade of the Jesuit priest. Newly promoted to the position: his current US deputy, a numerary of Opus Dei, and former correspondent of Fox News. As the new deputy director, a woman: the Spanish journalist Paloma Ovejero.
On August 29th, he will celebrate his 74th birthday; in 2012 he was already eligible for retirement; and today, July 11, 2016, marks the tenth anniversary of his appointment as director of the Vatican Press Office: Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman who - with a discrete style void of any self-interest, united with a deep understanding of the Church and of the mechanisms of communication - accompanied almost all of the pontificate of Benedict XVI and the first three years of that of Francis, is leaving office. He is succeeded by the American journalist Greg Burke, 56 years old, appointed as deputy director of the Vatican Press Office last December, after three years of serving as the communications “advisor” in the Secretariat of State. And as the new deputy director, a woman is arriving: the Spanish journalist Paloma García Ovejero, correspondent in Rome for the Catholic broadcaster Radio Cope.
The retirement of Father Lombardi is a change destined to considerably influence the Vatican news system. Born in Saluzzo (Cuneo) in 1942, the nephew of the famous Jesuit Riccardo Lombardi known as “God’s microphone” at the time of the Church of Pope Pacelli, as well as the famous Catholic jurist Gabrio Lombardi, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi attended his first school in Turin and attended middle school at the “Social” Institute of Jesuit Fathers. In 1960 he entered the novitiate of the Turin Province in the Society of Jesus at Avigliana. From 1962 to 1965 he finished his philosophical studies at the Aloisianum Institute of the Jesuits in Gallarate, and then for four years he was an assistant to students at the University College run by the Jesuits in Turin. He studied at the University of Turin and graduated in mathematics. From 1969 to 1973 he attended the Theological Faculty of the “Phil.-Teol. Hochschule St. Georgen” of the Jesuits in Frankfurt am Main and was licensed in Theology. He was ordained priest in 1973 and began working as an editor of “La Civiltà Cattolica”, the magazine of the Italian Jesuits, of which he became deputy director in 1977. For six years, from 1984 to 1990, he was the Italian Provincial of the Society of Jesus. A year later he was appointed director of Vatican Radio programs. In 2001 he became general manager of the Vatican Television Center, after the clamorous disappearance of his predecessor Don Ugo Moretto, who decided to leave the priesthood to marry a fellow journalist. Lombardi left Vatican TV in the hands of Don Edoardo Viganò at the end of 2012, on the eve of the historic resignation of Benedict XVI. And in March 2016 he left Vatican Radio, still remaining for a few months as director of the Press Office. The changing of the guard at the Radio and now the Press Office is part of the the reform and unification of the Vatican media, designed and carried out by the Prefect of the Secretariat for communication, Don Dario Viganò.
During these ten years, Father Lombardi has faced considerable “storms” in the media, as well as events that have rocked the Roman Curia, as in the case of the two Vatileaks and the resulting trials. With his slightly resigned, minimalist, and low-key style, he was a spokesman who never stole the spotlight from the real players; he was the “voice” of the Popes, without the need for shouting or resorting to fireworks. In total empathy with the institution he represented, far away from any form of “status symbol” or favoritism, he perfectly embodied the ideal of the Pope’s collaborator, someone used to serving without ever showing off.
As director of the Press Office, he also faced the crisis that followed the lifting of the excommunication of the Lefebvre bishops, among whom was Richard Williamson, denier of the Holocaust gas chambers. It was understood at that time, in the Vatican, that it was necessary to monitor the web daily, to understand what news had been published on the Church and especially on the Pope and the Holy See. The other major crisis that Lombardi experienced was that of the pedophilia scandal, in 2010, with harsh attacks and judicial inquiries that even brushed up against the very figure of the Pontiff, regarded as the manager of a multinational company and therefore somehow responsible for the actions of priests throughout the world. Through Vatican Radio, with his subdued but punctual comments, and with the preparation of news materials in different languages made promptly available to journalists, Father Federico became an irreplaceable reference point.
He got by with his subtle humor, accompanying thousands of journalists during the papal conclave in 2013, the first in the history of the Church that occured with a renunciatory Pope for reasons of age and “emeritus.” In his daily briefings, irony was never lacking, like when he was forced to list the chemical characteristics of the cartridges designed to cause white or black smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel: “Today we hold this briefing on an inevitable situation,” he told reporters from around the world. Or when, smiling, he asked reporters: “Do not call me all at the same time to know the date of the conclave, otherwise I will not be able to send you the press release.” Or when he responded to those who asked him what the Emeritus Pope had eaten that day: “We should ask him.”
The election of the first Jesuit pope in history shocked the Jesuit Vatican spokesman, who did not consider it within the range of possibility, and who needed almost an hour to recover from the news. Father Lombardi has had to adapt to the style of Bergoglio, who is very different from his predecessor, and more inclined to give interviews and to dialogue across the board, unfiltered, during return flights while traveling.
With his successor, the Press Office of the Holy See returns to a secular journalist as its director, a numerary of Opus Dei, as Joaquín Navarro Valls was for many years: it is Gregory Joseph Burke, born in a Catholic family in Saint Louis, in November 1959. He studied in a high school governed by the Jesuits, and in 1983 he graduated in Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. In those years he became acquainted with Opus Dei and joined, becoming a “numerary” member - that is, with the vocation of celibacy. He specialized in journalism, worked with “United Press International” in Chicago, then with the weekly “Metropolitan” and later became the Rome correspondent for the weekly “National Catholic Register.” He collaborated with Time magazine and became a correspondent in 1994. Seven years later, he moved to TV, as Rome correspondent for Fox News, a position he held until July 2012, when – at the height of the Vatileaks storm – he was called to the Secretariat of State for a position created ad hoc, as communications “advisor”. In December 2015 he was appointed deputy director of the Press Office of the Holy See, where he assumed service beginning the 1st of February 2016.
Also significant is the choice of a woman as deputy: Paloma Ovejero was born in Madrid in 1975, graduated in journalism in Spain, earned a master’s degree in communication from New York University, and for three years has been in Rome as a correspondent for the Catholic broadcaster Radio Cope. The transition will be effective by August, and Father Federico Lombardi will still accompany Pope Francis on the trip to Poland in late July, for the World Youth Day in Krakow
