John L. Allen Jr., the brash and fastidious American journalist who demystified Vatican affairs for English speakers for decades, died today after a three-year battle with stomach cancer. He had just turned 61.
Allen, who was raised by a single mother in Hays, Kan., earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Fort Hays State University and a master’s in religious studies from the University of Kansas. He taught journalism and advised the student paper at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calif., from 1993 to 1997.
Although his formal teaching career lasted only four years before he began a career-defining 17-year stint as Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, Allen’s passion for training young journalists never left him. Several of the most accomplished journalists in the English-language Catholic press today—Inés San Martín, Michael O’Loughlin, Christopher White, Claire Giangravè and John’s beloved wife, Elise Ann Allen—all got their starts working with Allen at Crux, the church-focused news outlet he founded with the Boston Globe in 2014.
Perhaps Allen was so keen to share his Vatican-reporting wisdom because he knew firsthand how difficult it was to gain.
San Martín, the former Rome bureau chief of Crux, wrote today in Our Sunday Visitor that Allen moved to Rome in 2000—three years into his job at NCR—in part because a critical review of his 2000 book on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith, had accused him of reporting from the comfort of his desk overseas. “John accepted that the criticism, in part, was fair—and he spent the rest of his career determined never again to earn it,” she wrote.
His adjustment to Rome was not simple, either, but Allen was determined to become “the best in the business when it came to explaining the intricacies of the Vatican to the world,” Giangravè, the Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service, told America. He achieved the goal, Giangravè said, by working “relentlessly at his craft.”
As another mentee, Christopher White, now the associate director for strategic initiatives and senior fellow of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, wrote in the National Catholic Reporter today, “Veteran colleagues who recall John’s arrival in Rome often do so with a smile, recounting a somewhat sloppily put together Midwestern man who was uncomfortable wearing a formal suit, yet desperate to be taken seriously by an institution defined by its formalities.”
Allen’s work and determination paid off, and he quickly became a sought-after voice on all things Vatican, bolstered by his staunch philosophy of being willing to talk to anyone. Throughout the illness and death of John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Allen was well known to U.S. audiences as a commentator on CNN, where he became a Senior Vatican Analyst. He continued to publish books on various Vatican topics and personalities throughout his career; they numbered 11 at the time of his death.
Throughout the papacy of Benedict XVI, Allen was the foremost English-speaking Vatican correspondent. James Martin, S.J., editor at large at America, reflected today:
For a long time, my friend John Allen was one of the best Vatican reporters around, in any language. John consistently broke stories, offered incisive analysis, had the best sources and pulled it all together in sparkling prose. His knowledge of the Vatican and of church history, as well as his familiarity with everyone from a cardinal-prefect of a Vatican dicastery to the newest papal appointee in a far-flung diocese, was nothing short of encyclopedic.
Current CNN Vatican Correspondent Christopher Lamb and America’s executive producer Sebastian Gomes, formerly of Salt and Light TV in Canada, separately remembered Allen’s columns during the Benedict papacy as “must-reads.” Speaking to Catholic News Agency, EWTN’s Francis X. Rocca, formerly of The Washington Post, said Allen “changed the way journalists cover the Vatican and the Catholic Church, enriching and enlivening what had been a stodgy beat.”
Indeed, Allen’s work, while meticulous and well-sourced with insider sources, was always accessible and often entertaining. “Once you read a short column by John, you, too, felt like an expert,” Gomes recalled. In his later career, Allen ventured into podcasting, hosting a show called “Last Week in the Church” that brought Allen’s wry, sharp voice to the forefront.
Friends of Allen’s—a title it was not difficult to earn!—were treated to that voice regularly over countless Italian meals, featuring often-middling pasta, plentiful wine and long, witty conversations from aperitivo to digestivo. (My own first meal with Allen, on a blustery day in New York, lasted four hours, featured an Elvis impersonator—a story for another day—and only ended when John had to leave for a ceremony where he would receive one of the many awards he earned throughout his life.)
Allen’s work was also renowned for its ability to reach across political divides. His philosophy of listening to everyone meant that, even reporting for a renowned progressive newspaper, he wrote for everyone, too. He valued presenting all sides of an issue fairly, even when such an approach earned him criticism.
Following the election of Pope Francis in 2013, Allen made a decisive shift toward analysis versus breaking news, a change some suspected had to do with some of his best-placed sources losing influence under the new pontificate. The change, however, was accompanied by a new venture for Allen: launching Crux, a vertical publication of The Boston Globe, featuring Allen as its star analyst, in 2014.
The Globe pulled its funding after two years, leaving Allen as the owner and challenging him to find funding for the site through partnerships with dioceses and other Catholic organizations, including the Knights of Columbus. Although Crux is perhaps best known today for publishing the first full-length interview with Pope Leo XIV—who had dined at Allen’s home just weeks before the conclave—its, and Allen’s, most lasting legacy may be the way Allen reshaped the English Catholic press by hiring and training promising young talent at Crux.
Giangravè told America that while Allen was famous for his reporting, “where he truly shone was in cheerleading his friends.” She credited Allen with giving her “the courage to approach the most powerful laypeople or clerics in the room and ask tough questions, knowing that a good editor—and a true friend—had my back.” She added, “In a polarized world, a look at John’s reporting throughout his exceptional career reporting on delicate subjects in the Catholic Church and the Vatican is a masterclass in balanced, nuanced reporting, built on trust and lived relationships.”
Editor in Chief Michael J. O’Loughlin of the National Catholic Reporter remembered:
On my first reporting trip to Rome, during the Synod on the Family in 2014, John dazzled me with his vast insight into what made the church tick, and I remain grateful for his collegial generosity, particularly in throwing me several interviews with cardinals and bishops, offering a then newbie reporter a welcome surge of confidence.
Sharing resources is not something all reporters are willing to do, but John was constantly willing to help other reporters, even those who did not work for Crux.
Longtime Reuters Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella, who worked with Allen for decades in Rome, told America: “John had towering journalistic skills and equally towering generosity. He was competitive, as I believe all journalists should be. But he was also fair, complimenting you if you had a scoop. Not all reporters on the same beat do that.”
Pullella recalled that the last time he had seen Allen was at Rome’s Salvator Mundi hospital, where both men were undergoing medical tests. “We caught up on old times and recalled how, in the early days before the front seats on papal planes were assigned, the two of us competed in no-holds-barred tarmac sprints to be the first to board. One time, we both slipped, fell on our faces and were nearly trampled by the stampede. We were among the last to board but made up for it by convincing the crew in the rear galley to give us the first drinks,” he remembered.
America’s senior Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell, who likewise worked alongside Allen for decades, said today:
John and I were friends for over a quarter of a century…. We first met when he came to Rome in the year 2000, and since then spent much time together, sharing confidences, also while traveling on the foreign trips of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I remember especially our traveling together to Kazakhstan soon after Sept. 11, where he—the American—was the most sought-after reporter by all the local media.
O’Connell described Allen as “a very generous person, ever willing to help. We had much fun together, and we covered most of the big Vatican events together in our different ways…. Everyone recognized John as a great journalist, an excellent communicator, an entertaining speaker, a star on CNN, and a man never lost for words. I admired the speed and accuracy with which he got the news out.”
O’Connell and Allen often had differing interpretations of Vatican news, differences they readily acknowledged. Still, they held each other in high esteem and cherished one another as friends. “I shared his joy,” O’Connell recalled, “when he confided over lunch in a Roman restaurant that he was going to marry Elise, a true love story. He showed enormous courage during these past years as he struggled with cancer, and Elise was truly heroic in the way she stood by his side and helped him on this final stage of his journey here on earth.”
Allen and O’Connell last spoke yesterday, when O’Connell wished Allen a happy birthday. “Now, he is at peace with the Lord,” O’Connell said.
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