Suchergebnisse

Few events in Latin America have attracted so many journalists as Pope John Paul's visit to Mexico in January 1979. Few have been so poorly reported.The contradiction is a reflection of coverage of Latin America in general: of the more than one thousand reporters present in Mexico, only a handful, mostly from the Catholic press, had a background in both religious affairs and Latin America. The vast majority did not speak Spanish, knew nothing about Latin America's Catholic Church, and had only a rudimentary understanding of Vatican affairs, which are Byzantinely complex even for the initiated; "color," therefore, substituted for in-depth reporting. But then journalists are not the only ones ignorant of the Latin American Church. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned intelligence representatives on the National Security Council about Catholic leaders in Latin America, in regard to the United States' "unpreparedness" for the religious upheaval in Iran, they reportedly could not name a single one.