I see that there is a blurb going around from a Reuters story that His Eminence Card. Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Archpriest of the Basilica, "belittled" reporters.
What happened in the conference was that one reporter after another was asking the very same question and, get this, the Cardinal was giving the very same answer. The reporters seemed to fixate on the idea of opening the tomb of the Apostle and then didn’t seem to hear the answer. After enduring this several times, the Cardinal said to one woman unfortunately to do it again, "I think I have adequately responded to all these questions".
That’s belittling? HA!
I should introduce them to a few of my old profs!
I think the journalists were a little miffed, however, since there wasn’t really all that much new information (interesting to them, that is, though I found most of it fascinating). It was all about archeology and dating stratas, etc. There are a few bits that were newsworthy and I posted a couple already in other entries. But I can say we were a little irritated that they wouldn’t share any decent photos of what was done. They made some rather dismal photo copies of photos for distribution… about a third the number of reporters, which didn’t help either. So, there were some things that could have been done better (as is the usual state of affairs), but the Cardinal did not belittle anyone.
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Sometimes, reporters belittle themselves. This seems to be such a case.
Reporters sometimes are a bit like little children. If they’re given a cookie, they like you. If not, they throw a tantrum.
It’s because it was a WOMAN reporter that these assertions of “belittling” are
being raised.
At any given press conference, whether its the President of the US, the Pope,
the Governor, the Mayor, or a City Council member, the Press
likes to keep asking the same question over and over. Some of its vanity. Then, the reporter gets to say they personally asked said question. Some of its a desire to see if the responder
will change their answer or inadvertantly let something slip that they may
not have intended if they keep wearing them down.
I think the announcements of excavation of the Tomb of St. Paul AND the redesignation of the
Roman Basilicas from Patriarchal to Papal are enormously important.
But, then I’m only a Catholic…Also, there is nothing scandalous or
titillating in either which is probably why a big collective yawn has been
the response of most of the press.