Interview with Nancy Wiechec

Many of the photos of Pope Benedict’s historic U.S. visit that you’ve seen on our home page and on this blog were taken by our visual media manager, Nancy Wiechec (right). Many of them are what I consider to be iconic images that you’ll be seeing for years to come, whether in our client publications [...]

Students use creativity to cover the pope

If you’ve noticed, a theme here this week is stories being told back home about seeing Pope Benedict.
Sister Carol Hoverman, editor of the archdiocesan newspaper The Witness in Dubuque, Iowa, has her own compilation of personal accounts. As she says, “Each person has a unique story to tell and memories that will last a lifetime.”
My favorite of [...]

Dream on

My colleague, CNS international editor Barb Fraze, blogged last month about papal-visit nightmares before the trip. As a stringer covering the New York lap of the visit, I too had a couple of unexpected dreams related to missed press buses.
Now, as a “veteran” of the papal visit, I am happy to report that I did not [...]

A great quote about Yankee Stadium and the pope

We’ve written before about how Yankee Stadium, the “cathedral of baseball” to many sports fans, looked like a real cathedral for the pope’s Mass.
And we talked here yesterday about memorable moments and memorable quotes from the trip.
Well, following up on yesterday’s post about people bringing memories of the papal trip home to their local communities, I’d [...]

Talking about the pope back home

Numerous Catholic papers came out this past weekend with coverage of the papal trip but also personal reflections on how the trip touched the lives of local Catholics. Some examples:

The Catholic Explorer in the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., published first-person accounts on the papal trip from a local college president, the diocesan superintendent of schools, [...]

Cardinal O’Malley on meeting with victims

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston gave an interview to his archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot, headlined “Cardinal reflects on apostolic visit, meeting with victims.” We’re working on a story on it for today.
In the interview, Cardinal O’Malley calls the presentation of a book of names of abuse victims (left) to the pope a “very poignant moment [...]

The Internet is nice, but …

Yes, you can get all the texts from Pope Benedict’s historic visit to the United States from various locations on the Internet, but wouldn’t you (or your parish study group) rather have them in one easy-to-read, magazine-style format? If so, you’re in luck. Origins, the CNS documentary service which has been chronicling the history of the [...]

Around the world in 577 days

VATICAN CITY — Samuel Clear from Tasmania was in Rome this week on the last leg of his walk around the world promoting prayer for Christian unity. You can read about it here.
An official at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity gave me a call Monday morning asking me if I wanted to [...]

Candid camera

Catholic Press Photo photographer Alessia Giuliani caught the following candid photo of CNS Rome bureau chief John Thavis at Park East Synagogue in New York April 18. Thavis, who has covered the Vatican for more than 25 years for Catholic News Service,  also covered Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to a Rome synagogue in 1986.

Cranking it out during the papapalooza

Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the U.S. was a short one compared to the lengthier jaunts of his globe-trotting predecessor, but this 81-year-old pope packed in a lot during the six days of his Great American Papapalooza.
As journalists, we at CNS throw ourselves into such events and come up for air after the last note [...]