The recent interview granted by Pope Francis to Mexican television generated news for what he said about Theodore McCarrick and the present unpleasantness. The mere fact that the interview took place was not, however, newsworthy. Papal interviews are now quantitatively ordinary. There is another shift too, a qualitative one. They are marked by an increasingly worldly ethos; the unique papal voice has now become more like any number of worldly voices.
Well into the pontificate of St John XXIII the principal Vatican communications organ, L’Osservatore Romano, would report that one or another official statement had been “gathered from the august lips of the Supreme Pontiff”. Papal communication began to loosen under St Paul VI, with an increasing number of audiences, and homilies and addresses that occasionally included extemporaneous remarks.
