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This, as you can imagine, set off a firestorm, with cell phones quickly pulled out, and calls being made to London, New York, and elsewhere.
But this, Delia told us, was not the point of the story. The real story was what happened in the press conference on the flight home. The Pope was not pleased with the negative press he had been receiving as a result of his press corps’ reporting throughout his trip that he had omitted mention of the Rohingya. He explained that he wanted to keep the door to dialogue open, in Myanmar as elsewhere; that too aggressive a stance ends the dialogue; and that journal- ists, as specialists in conveying messages, should “understand this quite well.” Zinger sent, and zinger received. And to be sure that the journalists were not so obtuse as to miss his displeasure, the Pope then announced that he would only take questions during the press conference relating to the trip itself, and to no other issues, no matter how significant. This, Delia ruefully informed us, was the beginning of the practice of only taking questions on the particular trip whenever that suited the Pope. Of course, it never suited the journalists.
The Pope expanded the practice a year later in 2018 on a trip to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, three Baltic countries. After announcing that he would only take ques- tions on the trip, the press corps decided to test his resolve by remaining largely silent and asking no questions. When it became apparent that there would be no questions, the Pope announced, “Then I would like to say a few things about the trip, which touched me very deeply.” He spoke for fourteen minutes, very poignantly, in what Delia labeled “the Francis Filibuster, because there is no other way to describe it.”
The final example Delia related was a trip to Canada in July of 2022, when the timely question was raised as to whether there should be a change in the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. In circumstances in which many reporters felt that the Pope could, and perhaps should, give a yes or no response, he chose instead to speak in Italian, and to do so in terms that can be fairly characterized as obtuse:
“This is very timely, but know that dogma and morality is always on a path of development, but in development in the same direction. . . . For the theological development of a moral or dogmatic issue, there is a rule that is very clear and illuminating. That’s what Vincent of Lerins did in the 10th century, more or less. He says that true doctrine, in order to go forward to develop, must not be quiet. . . . That is it consolidates with time, it dilates, it consolidates, becomes more still, but still progressing.”
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One can only imagine that the Pope’s comments, which seem obtuse but almost poetic even in English, were absolutely lyrical in Italian. But, what they meant, no one could de- termine. Delia suggests that this is explained, at least in part, by the fact that Francis is not a person who thinks in black and white, or one who sees issues with the type of clarity that