The Atlantic looks at the Vatican’s attempt to get control of its media incompetence, examining how it handled the 2010 speech that angered some in the Muslim world, continued revelations of clergy sexual abuse, and, most recently, the so-called Vati-leaks scandal. From the article:

In this environment, not having a media strategy is no longer a viable option — a reality the Vatican implicitly recognized this summer when it appointed a journalist, Greg Burke, the Fox News correspondent in Rome (and a member of the Catholic religious order Opus Dei), as the Vatican’s director of communications, a position that never existed before. It is one of a series of decisive moves the Vatican has made in response to “Vati-leaks”: The new director of the Vatican Bank took the unusual step of inviting journalists to the highly secretive institution’s offices and discussed the intentions to comply with modern banking norms. Father Lombardi began his regular press briefings — another novelty. During the past year, Benedict opened a Twitter account. Moreover, since the Vati-leaks scandal broke, the pope has been calling in a range of Church leaders for much wider and more regular consultation. The scandal has clearly served as a wake-up call: a sign that the pope is trying hard to regain control of a Church that has begun to seem badly adrift. The pope has even made some effort to seek out the views of people outside the Roman curia — the Vatican equivalent of going beyond the Beltway.

Read the full article here. 

Michael J. O’Loughlin is national correspondent at America and author of Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear.