A savvy confidant, like the previous papal spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who came from a national daily newspaper, Spain's ABC, might well have prevented the crisis that enveloped the Vatican this week. He would have spotted immediately the danger in the pope quoting someone describing the teachings of Mohammad as 'evil and inhuman' and tried to persuade the pontiff to express his ideas in a rather more tactful fashion.
I think this is a misjudgement. The shy professor who isn't media-savvy.
He's not a man without experience with the media in his previous position and he may have had some notion that the media who live for 'conflict' would lift ideas out of context from his speech.
Ya think? ;)