In the messy aftermath of yet another papal interview, how shall I explain what went wrong? There were so many different problems, it’s hard to know where to begin.
One might start with the odd habits of Eugenio Scalfari, the veteran Italian journalist who has now had three such sessions with the Holy Father. It is Scalfari’s habit, when he conducts an interview, to make no recording and take no notes. (A few reports from Rome have referred to this eccentricity as a “tradition,” suggesting an undeserved reverence for Scalfari as a sort of national institution.) Scalfari then reconstructs the conversation from memory.
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