By now, it's an "All Things Catholic" tradition to run down the top under-covered Vatican stories of the year. The idea is not to flag the year's most celebrated events or personalities, because plenty of other news agencies do that. Rather, I try to lift up storylines that otherwise flew below radar but that were actually fairly important.
If I were compiling a list of the biggest Vatican stories of the year, for instance, the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1 would probably be near the top. Yet it doesn't make the cut as an "under-covered" event, because it's hard to believe anybody who picked up a newspaper in May 2011, or who watched TV that day, could have missed it. Similarly, a document from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on reform of the international economy, as well as the Vatican's diplomatic spat with Ireland, both were important stories, but they were hardly overlooked.
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