To illustrate that the more things change, the more they stay the same, it’s worth recalling that L’Osservatore Romano was born 150 years ago amid the Vatican crisis of its day: the collapse of the Papal States. When Rome fell nine years after the paper was born, L’Osservatore became the voice of popes who declared themselves “prisoners of the Vatican.”
Over the years, L’Osservatore Romano has played a unique dual role -- both a vehicle for the Vatican to get its message out, but also a forum for serious journalistic analysis and commentary. During the Fascist era, for example, L’Osservatore was sometimes the only paper in Italy not under the thumb of the Mussolini regime, and it was widely read as the only reliable source of insight about what was really going on.
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