Columbia July 2011

Page 23

Courtesy of L’Osservatore Romano

Pope Benedict XVI reads a copy of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in 2010. in its prestige and distribution, but it also marked the beginning of the paper’s clashes with the Fascist regime. Forced to reduce its press run drastically, L’Osservatore Romano wasn’t even allowed to publish war news. By this time, the newspaper fell under the purview of the Vatican Secretariat of State, as it does today. During the postwar period, L’Osservatore Romano also saw other innovations, most notably the advent of weekly language editions in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, with a

monthly Polish edition beginning in 1980, following the election of Blessed John Paul II. From the outset, the newspaper has been blessed with talented editors. After seeing the newspaper through the war years, Dalla Torre was succeeded in 1960 by Raimondo Manzini, a respected journalist and politician who led the paper during the Second Vatican Council and the years that followed. In 1978, Manzini was succeeded by Valerio Volpini, an intellectual and writer who oversaw a redesign of the newspaper. And from JULY 2011

♦ C O L U M B I A ♦ 21


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