As Spring 2019 turned into summer, journalists, media relations professionals and communications experts gathered for four days in St Petersburg, Florida, to take part in the annual Catholic Media Conference. The event, sponsored by the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, included a talk by the head of the disciplinary section in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Mgr John Kennedy.
Titled “Clergy Accountability and the Media’s Response”, the talk Mgr Kennedy gave was part personal reminiscence, part humanising presentation of the CDF’s work, and part cri de coeur. It was revealing in almost every line of its seventeen pages, and deserves to be counted among the most significant public interventions by churchmen on the subject of the worldwide crisis and the Vatican’s response to it.
