Jason Berry Heads to Rome to Contribute to Abc's Coverage of Papal Conclave

By Dave Walker
The Times-Picayune
March 4, 2013

http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2013/03/jason_berry_heads_to_rome_to_c.html

Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola, center, waves to reporters as he arrives with two unidentified assistants, for a meeting, at the Vatican, Monday (March 4). Cardinals from around the world have gathered inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI's decision to retire. (Photo by AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Jason Berry to contribute to ABC’s papal-conclave coverage. TV tweet of the day so far. TV Monday.

TV Linkzilla Daily for 3/4/13 starts now.

New Orleans author Jason Berry was scheduled to fly to Rome this past weekend to report for duty Monday (March 4) with ABC News. There, he’ll contribute to the network’s coverage of the papal conclave. His return flight isn’t scheduled until much later in the month, though he said last week that he expects a new pope to be elected sooner than that.

“The rumors I keep hearing are (March 10), but no one knows for sure,” he said.

In addition to consulting and perhaps a few on-camera appearances as an analyst for ABC News, Berry — whose writings include several major entries about the Catholic Church — also will be blogging the events of the next many days for the GlobalPost and National Catholic Reporter.

“You don’t have to be Catholic to be fascinated by the choosing of a pope,” he said. “When Obama won the presidency, people around the world were drawn to it as a global story, because America elected an African-American, much less a guy who is charismatic and brilliant. I think because of the scandals that the church has endured in recent years, many non-Catholics — many Muslims, people in many parts of the world — are going to be following this with unusual interest.”

Berry is an expert on the biggest scandal and cover-up — the clergy abuse crisis — as well as Vatican politics. (A 2011 Washington Post profile has his background.)

“Pope Benedict entered when John Paul died,” Berry said. “He inherited a scandal that had been building for almost two decades. John Paul, who obviously was one of the great popes and geopolitical figures of modern history, certainly had a flaw, which was his utter inability to come to grips with it. He couldn’t deal with it. Benedict had almost eight years, and he couldn’t deal with it, either.”

The scandal is fueling intense coverage of the papal transition, Berry said, especially in the aggressive Italian press.

“What you've got is a deeply divided internal bureaucracy on the one hand, a papal bureaucracy, and on the other hand all of these abuse cases, cardinals who have been complicit or stained, if you will, by mistakes they made,” he said. “That is the tone of the buildup of the coverage that is unfolding.”

Read more about coverage of the unfolding events in Rome:

Greg Garrison @ AL.com details EWTN’s coverage so far:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — When Mother Angelica launched a small TV network in the garage of her small Alabama monastery in suburban Irondale in 1981, she didn't anticipate it would now have global reach and be a key player in coverage of an old pope resigning and a new pope being elected.

Alabama-based EWTN began "wall-to-wall" coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's departure Wednesday morning, Feb. 27, with live coverage of his final papal audience.

Katie Yoder @ NewsBusters.org analyzes network coverage so far:

The final count is in. From the day of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement to the day of his retirement, the networks unabashedly attacked the pope and the Catholic Church, adding to a pope resignation coverage tally of referencing the church as troubled 157 times and using the world “scandal” 105 times in 118 reports.

A previous Culture and Media Institute tally noted the frequency ABC, CBS and NBC referred to the church as troubled, aired the word “scandal,” and ran late-night comedy show clips cracking pope jokes. Pressing for church modernization and calling for a change in regards to women and gays also made the list.

The Monday report from the Associated Press @ ABC News:

They came, they took an oath of secrecy, and they agreed to send a message to the previous pope, whose resignation has thrown the church into turmoil and unleashed a new wave of scandals.

The cardinals meeting to choose the next pope started work Monday on planning their conclave. Benedict XVI remained holed up at the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo, his temporary retirement home while cardinals pick his successor.

A Feb. 11 op-piece by Berry @ NYTimes.com:

During his eight years as pope, Benedict XVI sought rebirth for the Roman Catholic Church by meeting with victims of predator priests and making several apologies for the church’s aching abuse crisis.

But he failed to buck the logic of apostolic succession, a position that sees cardinals and bishops following in a direct spiritual line from Jesus’ original apostles but has been warped into a de facto immunity given to men of the hierarchy.