Leo’s answers to the other questions were careful and calibrated. They were amply newsworthy, and they offered what could fairly be called a master class in press relations.
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Even veteran politicians with practiced media savvy, honed under the most ruthlessly challenging conditions, and and who have forged strong relationships with the scribblers in the press corps who follow them, occasionally get caught flat-footed and tongue-tied.
That’s not exactly what happened to Pope Leo XIV earlier this week, when he decided to take a question in English from EWTN’s Valentina Di Donato, after answering queries from other reporters in an informal and spur-of-the-moment gathering – we call it a “gaggle” in the trade – outside the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
