Francis cries foul on Catholic media attacks
One Catholic media network dominates all others in size. It is also a platform for bitter attacks on Pope Francis
When Pope Francis takes on the opposition to his papacy, it sometimes
feels like watching the Argentinian rugby team. Los Pumas are known for
their tough, courageous playing style. The players are not afraid to
make the big tackles. So it is with Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Whether
it is facing down the nationalist populism of Viktor Orbán in Hungary
or taking on the Tridentine Mass groups who undermine the teaching of
the Second Vatican Council, the Argentine Pope is taking an increasingly
bold stance. After eight and a half years, his pontificate has moved
into top gear. That boldness was on display during his recent trip to
Slovakia, where he made the most explicit comments to date about the
powerful clerical and political forces that he’s come up against. “Some
people wanted me to die,” Francis bluntly told a group of fellow Jesuits
in Bratislava when one of them asked him how he was recovering from his
recent intestinal operation. “There were even meetings between prelates
who thought the Pope’s condition was more serious than the official
version. They were preparing for the conclave. Patience!”
One prominent platform on which prelates opposed to Francis enjoy a megaphone is the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). Founded 40 years ago by the charismatic and feisty Mother Angelica, a member of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, it has grown to become the largest religious media organisation in the world. EWTN reaches 310 million television households in more than 145 countries; it owns the Catholic News Agency and in 2011 it acquired the National Catholic Register from the Legionaries of Christ. Its accounts for 2019 show an annual income of $64,946,744 (£47,368,907).
Francis has largely ignored the unrelenting guerrilla warfare against
his pontificate from some Catholic media outlets. That changed in
Slovakia. In remarks reported by La Civiltá Cattolica, run by the
Jesuits and approved by the Vatican, he talked about “a large Catholic
television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of
the Pope”. No one is in any doubt he was referring to EWTN. He went on
to say that although he deserves “attacks and insults because I am a
sinner … the Church does not”. He added: “They are the work of the
devil. I have also said this to some of them.” The Pope was careful to
distinguish between attacks on him personally and the office of the
papacy and the Church in general. Nor was he talking about EWTN as a
whole, but parts of its coverage. Francis has publicly admitted his
mistakes, made space for criticism and given his full support to press
freedom. But, as Fr Antonio Spadaro, La Civiltá Cattolica’s director,
tweeted a few days later: “Never confuse freedom of information and
disinformation.”
In his reference to the devil the Pope was
bringing out the original meaning of the Greek word diabolos, which can
be translated as “to divide”. Catholic media create space for criticism
of popes and bishops; but they must guard against falling prey to the
Evil One’s slanderous, false accusatory spirit. One of EWTN’s flagship
programmes is The World Over, hosted by Raymond Arroyo, a regular Fox
News contributor, which runs unrelentingly negative attack lines against
Francis. This hostility has seeped into some other areas of the
network. In September 2019, a priest used his homily to attack the Pope
during an EWTN live-streamed Mass, while the National Catholic Register
was one of just two websites that in 2018 released the text of former
papal diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s “testimony”, calling on
the Pope to resign. The other was LifeSiteNews, a belligerent
anti-Francis media outlet recently removed from Facebook and YouTube for
publishing misleading information about Covid-19. The falsehoods and
wild exaggerations of Viganò’s claims have since been exposed. At the
time, Arroyo told Fox News they were “credible”, and he continues to
give Viganò, now the peddler of unhinged conspiracy theories and an
increasingly isolated figure, a platform.
So far, EWTN has not
responded to Francis’ remarks; Michael Warsaw, chairman and CEO of the
network, did not reply to my request for a comment. In his first show
since the Pope’s rebuke, Arroyo spent 20 minutes interviewing Chad
Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America.
Egged on by Arroyo, Dr Pecknold scoffed at various Francis reforms, and
dismissed the synod process as a “political technique”. Although they
discussed the Pope’s remarks to his fellow Jesuits, his bracing
criticism of EWTN didn’t come up. It looks as though EWTN’s strategy is
to keep shtum, double down and wait out this pontificate.
But
this is a gamble, and the stakes are high. “If you are a Catholic media
group perceived as being against Peter, that’s a huge problem,” Gloria
Purvis, the popular EWTN radio show host who was suddenly axed from the
network at the end of last year, told me. “It calls into question how
one can claim to be a faithful Catholic and promote hatred for the Pope.
What are you saying about the Holy Spirit who chose the Pope? It also
raises the question which needs to be addressed: brand-wise,
mission-wise – is this really who we are?”
Anger bubbles under the surface of Arroyo’s hostility to Francis. In a
1995 article for America magazine, Fr James Martin identified anger as
the main driver of Mother Angelica’s television ministry, which, he
argued, presented a “bitter, intransigent, defensive” vision of the
Church. Those opposed to this pontificate would prefer a Church defined
by what it is against rather than what it is for. Anger also has a
spiritual dimension. “Anger is one of the demons of the Desert Fathers
of the Early Church, and they said it requires greater spiritual
awareness and prayer to make sure that demon does not control us,” Abbot
Christopher Jamison, the leader of the English Benedictines, says. Fr
Jamison, a best-selling author and experienced broadcaster who currently
helps to run a media production company, has followed EWTN’s
development.
He points out that Mother Angelica demonstrated
genuine curiosity during interviews in the early years but became
angrier as time went on. “Good television is about being curious, not
about being furious. In so far as EWTN is furious not curious, it’s not
serving anyone well – least of all itself,” he adds.
EWTN points
out that its coverage brings the activities of the Pope into the homes
of more people than any other media outlet. When I was researching my
book The Outsider, Michael Warsaw told me that it was “simply ludicrous”
to suggest that EWTN opposes Francis. Yet, it is instructive not only
to look at what the network covers, but what it chooses to ignore. When
Let Us Dream, the Pope’s blueprint for the post-pandemic world, was
released, EWTN offered scant coverage.
“I told Pope Francis [in a
letter] that the book had been written up in The New York Times but had
been wholly blanked by EWTN. He wrote back that the network’s cerrazón
(‘closure’) pained him and that he prayed for them,” Austen Ivereigh,
who collaborated with Francis on the volume, told me. “I know that
various US bishops have spoken to him about the way the network’s biased
and hostile coverage has undermined communion with Rome. So his
remarks to the Jesuits in Bratislava don’t come as too much of a
surprise.”
According to America magazine, Francis was also heard
to have asked an EWTN reporter and cameraman on the papal plane to Iraq
for the network to stop “badmouthing” him. EWTN appears impervious to
criticism. In The Outsider, I reported that the papal nuncio to the US,
Archbishop Christophe Pierre, challenged Warsaw about Arroyo’s show. He
was also asked questions at a 2019 meeting of the Vatican dicastery for
communications, on which he serves. Nothing happened.
Some say that Mother Angelica would not have approved the politicised
direction that EWTN has taken. The network combines devotional
programmes with partisan political support for the Republican Party and
ex-President Donald Trump. The board of EWTN includes Tim Busch and
Frank Hanna III, both Republican Party donors, while the Knights of
Columbus, whose leadership under Carl Anderson was linked to the
Republicans, gave $1.25 million to EWTN in 2014 and $500,000 in 2015.
“If
people believe the network is more beholden to a political party than
to Jesus Christ, that would be a drastic shift in perception away from
Mother Angelica’s ethos of fidelity to Jesus and his Church,” says
Gloria Purvis, a black, pro-life presenter who had used her show to
speak out on racial issues after the murder of George Floyd. EWTN’s
founder criticised bishops, Purvis told me, but it was “never in a way
that made her or her network look like a pawn in a political party”.
It’s eye-watering to see a Pope defending himself from attacks from a powerful Catholic media network. The obvious group to say something would be the leadership of the US bishops’ conference. So far there has been silence. Archbishop José Gómez, its president, is a member of EWTN’s board. Francis must sometimes feel like one of the few players on the pitch willing to make those hard tackles.
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