Being in Rome when even taxi drivers and waiters will volunteer updates on the state of the Pope’s health is a strange experience. One can only imagine what it must have been like for Vatican watchers or residents before the invention of smartphones, X and the 24-hour news cycle.
In 1958 Michael de la Bédoyère, who was then editor of the Herald, found himself in the excruciatingly tricky position of not knowing for sure whether Pope Pius XII was alive or dead when the paper faced its weekly press deadline. He gambled that he would be dead by the time the paper went on sale in time for Sunday Mass.
