ROME – Naturally enough, journalists covering the Vatican tend to seek out figures in the system from their own countries or language groups. French speakers seek out the French, Spanish speakers the Spaniards and Latin Americans, the Italians gravitate to their paesani, and, by the same logic, Americans are drawn to fellow Americans.
Thus it was that when Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was appointed the new head of the powerful Dicastery for Bishops in January 2023, my wife Elise and I made an appointment to drop by for a courtesy call in his Vatican office. I reminded him we’d met years before when he was the Prior General for the Augustinians, he told me that when he’d become the Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru he’d discovered a copy of my book on Opus Dei on a shelf in his new office, and we had a pleasant conversation.
