RNS
NEWS FEATURE
Blogger,
27, drags age-old church into 21st century
By
Tim Townsend
©2010 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS (RNS) — Rocco
Palmo’s life has been infused with four major blessings —
his large Italian family, journalism, baseball and the Roman Catholic
church.
All four coalesced recently when the 27-year-old blogger, who lives in and works from his parents’ home in Philadelphia, received an honorary doctorate from the Aquinas Institute of Theology — and saw his beloved Phillies take on the Cardinals.
“Rocco has shown that someone with his background — a Christian
commitment, but also his abilities and background in journalism —
can use the blogosphere in a very powerful way in terms of communicating
the message of the church,” said Rev. Richard Peddicord, president
of the Aquinas Institute.
Aquinas has never awarded an honorary degree to a journalist, and the
only other journalist who has given Aquinas’ commencement address
was Peter Steinfels of The New York Times in 1993.
In awarding Palmo an honorary doctorate, the 84-year-old seminary is
making a statement about the changing relationship between journalism
and the Catholic Church. The award for Palmo’s work on his Whispers
in the Loggia blog is also an expression of how North American Catholic
leaders hope to encourage a younger generation to engage their faith
through news.
“Palmo has done something no mainstream journalist has ever done
— scooped announcements by the Vatican of new US bishops or archbishops,”
said Debra Mason, executive director of the Religion Newswriters Association.
“That’s a formidable task and one that requires serious
reporting skills.”
Palmo’s reporting skills were founded on a lifelong love of journalism.
His father has worked on the business side of the Philadelphia Daily
News, managing its circulation for 35 years, rising at 3 a.m. most mornings
to oversee the day’s press run.
Early on, Palmo felt himself leaning toward the priesthood, guided along
by former Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, whom Palmo calls
“my rabbi.”
But as thoughts of the priesthood faded, Palmo — a wiry, garrulous
man with a strong Philadelphia accent and a prominent Roman nose —
began imagining how to combine his interests in Catholicism and journalism.
After he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, he couldn’t
find the perfect job in mainstream journalism. A religion reporting
colleague encouraged him to start a blog.
Like many blogs, Whispers started as a way for one person to tell the
world about his own interests. Today, more than 5,000 posts later, Palmo
says his site draws between 15,000 and 40,000 unique visitors a week.
For many who are employed by the church, Whispers is a must-read.
“I do look at it with some regularity,” said St. Louis Archbishop
Robert Carlson. “It’s a good source of information I wouldn’t
have otherwise.”
Ann Rodgers, religion reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said
that when Palmo started attending the annual meetings of the US Conference
of Catholic Bishops, “he was like a rock star. I had archbishops
asking me to introduce them to Rocco.”
Palmo said the role he and other new media publishers play was different
from traditional journalists’ covering the church for their secular
newspapers.
“I want the church to succeed,” Palmo said. “But I
won’t say something brilliant happened when it hasn’t. I’m
not a spokesperson for the church.”
Palmo said the toughest thing he’s had to do was publish a 2006
letter of no confidence from the priests of the Archdiocese of New York
to now retired Cardinal Edward Egan. The letter said the priests’
relationship with Egan had been “defined by dishonesty, deception,
disinterest and disregard.”
In fact, Palmo’s specialty is something the church tries to protect
against. In the last year, he broke the news of the appointments of
archbishops in New York, Miami and Los Angeles before traditional news
outlets.
The search for the new bishop is both prescribed and secretive. Few
people know all the pieces of the puzzle during the meticulous process,
and anyone who does is bound by a Vatican oath of silence called a “papal
secret.”
That oath is broken under penalty of excommunication, which is why Palmo’s
scoops of new assignments are so impressive to secular newspaper reporters
who cover the Catholic Church.
“A great many of his sources are anonymous archbishops and bishops
who know they can talk to him, and feed him stuff,” said Rodgers,
“and they don’t have to worry about their names showing
up.”
Palmo said that when information he gathered was not public, “I
can’t put a name on it.
“In the outside world, there’s planned leaks,” Palmo
said. “Here, if I put a name to it, someone would lose their job,
or worse.”
Palmo’s financial situation reflects the overall problem with
blogging for a living. He relies on readers to contribute toward things
such as his travel expenses for reporting trips, and his cellphone bills,
which are substantial.
Craig Persinger, a lawyer from Marion, Ind., has never met Palmo, but
offered the blogger a plane ticket to cover Archbishop Jose Gomez’s
“mass of welcome” in Los Angeles on May 26.
“The lay faithful of this hierarchical church we’re in don’t
get a peek behind the curtain to see the human and political sides of
our church,” Persinger said. “That part of the church is
full of human interest stories, and Rocco covers that better than anyone.”
Palmo said “breaching the wall of security” surrounding
official church information “is the easy part.”
“The hardest part is trying to make a full-time living off it,”
he said. “I have a girlfriend, and I’d like to give her
a ring someday, but at this point, I’m waiting until I can clear
out of my parents’ house.”
Townsend writes for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Mo.
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