Chairs are beginning to wobble inside the Dicastery for Communication. And while Massimiliano Menichetti continues with the far from straightforward task of pretending that he intends to turn everything upside down while ensuring that absolutely nothing changes, unease is growing at Palazzo Pio over the prospect that the arrival of the new Prefect may cause more than a few upset stomachs.
“She’s already poking her nose into the money,” some of Andrea Tornielli’s loyalists, who shuttle back and forth between the fourth and second floors of Palazzo Pio, have remarked in recent weeks. The tone, naturally, was that of people who find it almost improper that a newly appointed Prefect might actually want to understand how the Dicastery’s resources are being spent. Maria Montserrat Alvarado, however, already appears to have identified one of the places where the problem lies.
Over the years, several people brought in under Andrea Tornielli’s wing gradually made themselves comfortable, to the point of behaving as though Palazzo Pio had become a sort of private property. Among them is Salvatore Cernuzio, who continues to display serious difficulties even when it comes to writing articles in correct Italian, yet has been able to operate under the protection of the Editorial Director and, further up the chain of command, Prefect Paolo Ruffini.
Everyone was there for a reason and, consequently, nobody could be touched. The arrangement rather resembled a game of pick-up sticks: pull out the wrong stick and the whole structure risked collapsing. Now the Pope has removed the stick at the very top, and everyone underneath it is consequently beginning to shake.
Thanks to Tornielli, meanwhile, Cernuzio has also reinvented himself as a sort of new Nanni Moretti of Crotone and has spent months trying to shoehorn into practically everything the grand documentary on Pope Leo XIV to which he contributed. A work of astonishing banality, which does not appear to have aroused much interest among readers or even among YouTube users, where the viewing figures have remained decidedly modest. The few views it did receive, moreover, came thanks to the articles published by Silere non possum when YouTube blocked the video over a copyright issue. Even the copyright dispute, in short, turned out to be more interesting than the documentary itself.
At Palazzo Pio, then, Salvatore and Andrea know perfectly well that less comfortable times are on the way. And whining until the documentary about Pope Leo is chopped into bits here and there, turned into a few reels and recycled for Leo XIV’s birthday, in the hope that some fragment of it might eventually pass before the Pope’s eyes and help curry favour with him, is unlikely to be enough.
The problem is that these people still do not seem to understand who they are dealing with. Leo XIV uses a mobile phone, writes emails and messages, reads the newspapers and is hardly cut off from what is happening around him. But he does not watch Vatican News and reads L’Osservatore Romano little and reluctantly, not least because he is perfectly aware of just how badly certain instruments of Vatican communication are managed.
Leo XIV’s hope, shared by many others, is that the new Prefect will finally bring about a change of pace. And the results of that change will, in all likelihood, not be measured by counting reels produced to please somebody or documentaries that nobody watches. They will show up elsewhere: in management, in decisions, in the allocation of resources and, above all, in the ability to get to grips with a system that for far too long has confused institutional communication with the protection of its own small vested interests.
Aware that things are about to change and that Andrea Tornielli will soon be told to pack his bags, what remains of the Palazzo Pio clique has sensibly begun preparing its next nest. A few cushions, a couple of suitcases already packed and, above all, a familiar address to which they can return. In the end, after all, one always goes back “to where one was happy”, as the saying goes.
And so Andrea Tornielli has thoughtfully arranged for the Dicastery for Communication to sign an agreement with the Sae group. The agreement will make it possible to distribute “videos and news about Pope Leo XIV and his pontificate 24 hours a day on the website of ‘La Stampa’ and the Group’s other newspapers”.
La Stampa. Yes, you read that correctly.
The Italian daily newspaper where Andrea Tornielli worked before moving to the Vatican, and where he also arranged for Salvatore Cernuzio to be hired. The very same newspaper which, evidently, still represents a reassuring harbour now that both men are aware that it may soon be one of the few places to which they can return. From tomorrow, Friday 11 September, a widget on the La Stampa website will provide continuous updates on the activities of the Pope and of the Church around the world.
Tornielli, who in recent years seems to have developed a genuine fetish for QR codes and widgets, has therefore signed, on behalf of the Dicastery for Communication, an agreement with the media group that used to pay his salary when he worked at La Stampa. All this at a moment when he knows perfectly well that he may very soon find himself back there: once again writing gossip, background stories and indiscretions, while dispensing little lectures to Popes and priests just as he used to do.
What concrete financial benefit the Dicastery for Communication gets from the arrangement, on the other hand, remains a mystery. Nobody knows. We are not told. Apparently the widget itself is meant to be answer enough.
Of course, if this operation too has been handled with the same casualness with which Andrea Tornielli has issued authorisations signed in the name of the Dicastery to people with criminal convictions who publish insults even against the Pope, then there really will be plenty to laugh about. But we will return to those details later, in due course. And there will indeed be something to laugh about. Because, as so often happens at Palazzo Pio, behind an innocent little widget there may be stories far more interesting than the widget itself.
d.A.L.
Silere non possum
