John L Allen Jr Daily Column

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

For years, followers of the Dali Lama, the Falun Gong movement, and underground Christian churches have all complained that China gets a “free pass” around the world on issues of human rights and religious freedom, mostly because everyone is eager to cash in on the country's exploding economy.

Today Catholic leaders in northeastern India, which has seen repeated outbreaks of anti-Christian violence in recent months at the hands of Hindu extremists, are saying much the same thing about Asia’s other rising superpower.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

Today is the Vatican’s 42nd annual “World Communications Day,” with the theme this year being the somewhat unwieldy “The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service. Searching for the Truth in Order to Share it with Others.”

Benedict XVI’s message for the occasion can be found here: Message for World Communications Day

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

I’ve long said that trying to report on Roman Catholicism through the prism of corporate logic or secular politics is like trying to present a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space: inevitably only bits and pieces of the reality come into view, and the resulting picture is often badly distorted.

That’s a nice sound-bite so far as it goes, but most people need a concrete example to get the point. Recent days have given us a doozy, in the form of controversy surrounding the election of Fernando Lugo, a former Verbite priest and the emeritus bishop of the San Pedro diocese in Paraguay, as his country’s new president -- a victory which came despite Vatican insistence that Lugo remains a bishop and thus should stay out of the partisan fray.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

Since Pope Paul VI created the Synod of Bishops in 1965 to give the bishops of the world a voice in governance of the universal church, the body has met 21 times. Among other things, these sessions have sometimes been criticized as overly abstract and out of touch with the concrete realities in various parts of the world.

Perhaps aware of that concern, participants in the next Synod of Bishops in October, this one devoted to the theme of the “Word of God,” decided to conduct a sociological survey of attitudes towards the Bible in various nations. Sponsored by the Catholic Biblical Federation and carried out by GFK Eurisko, Italy’s leading market research organization, the survey polled people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Russia. Plans call for four other countries shortly to be added to the mix, all in the global South: Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Australia.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

My first overseas trip as a reporter came in the 1990s, when the National Catholic Reporter dispatched me to Austria to cover a national assembly of the Catholic Church. While in Central Europe, I also went to Slovakia and Hungary to interview leading churchmen there. I was accompanied by Hubert Feichtlbauer, a veteran Austrian journalist and commentator on Catholic affairs, who has since become a good friend. I recall sitting in the train on the way to Budapest preparing for an interview with Cardinal László Paskai, while Hubert caught up on some back copies of NCR.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

During the early phases of planning for Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States, some voices advised against visiting America in the middle of the 2008 election, given the inevitable risk of being drawn into partisan politics. One senior Vatican official dismissed those fears with the quip: “When is it not campaign season in the United States these days?”

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

I’m in Rome this week, where this morning I took part in an hour-and-a-half radio program on RAI, the Italian state network, along with Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former Apsostolic Nunio in the United States; Gian Maria Vian, director of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper; and Greg Burke of the Fox News Channel. The topic was Pope Benedict XVI’s April 15-20 visit to the United States.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

At least three times during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, a prominent pro-choice Catholic politician has received communion during a papal Mass. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, both Democrats, took communion during the Mass on Thursday at Nationals Park in Washington, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, received communion in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

There’s a peculiar bit of subtext to media coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, one to which I may be particularly sensitive, given that I have spent a considerable portion of the last four days sitting on a television set somewhere listening to the segments that either precede or follow reports about the pope.

Simply put, the subtext is this: At least as a TV story, the pope is barely holding his own against the polygamists.