The Vatican requests a retraction (from the Times Online)

The story in this morning’s Times of London had all the ingredients of a Fleet Street scoop: Prince Charles’s upcoming papal audience, King Henry VIII’s divorce and Pope Benedict’s faux pas gift.

The problem was, the report was ”completely untrue and has no basis whatsoever in fact,” according to the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.

It may be a sign of the times that the Vatican issued a sharply worded request for a retraction of the story only a few hours after it appeared in print. I certainly can’t remember the last time the Vatican Press Office made public a letter of complaint to a major news outlet.

lombardi2

“I would ask you to issue an immediate and unambiguous denial,” said Father Lombardi’s letter to the Times editor-in-chief.

Could it be the Vatican is getting fed up with inaccurate reporting?

The Times story said that when Prince Charles comes to the Vatican next week, Pope Benedict planned to present him with ”a gift that may strike an unwelcome chord”: a facsimile of the 1530 appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

As everyone knows, Pope Clement refused that appeal, King Henry married his mistress anyway and renounced Roman Catholicism, establishing the Church of England.

As the Times put it, the pope’s gift appeared to be either “an unfortunate accident or a piece of mischievous theater.” That was no doubt enough to set people off at the Vatican.

One part of the story did appear to be true: The Italian company Scrinium is in fact producing a limited-edition facsimile of the famous letter of Henry VIII, in collaboration with the Vatican Secret Archives, which holds the document in its underground vaults.

The Times is no friend of the Catholic Church and is always happy to find an angle which paints Catholicism and the Vatican in particular in a poor light.

Recently, they've given heavy coverage to other perceived papal faux pas ; the Bp Williamson controversy and the Pope's remarks about condoms and AIDS in Africa. I bet they were rubbing their hands with glee over the thought of piling on again with this story and thought to themselves, "yes...good luck really does come in threes!"

Bottom feeders.

The British press is a disgrace.

Richard Owen was the reporter....here he is again -

Condoms make AIDS worse, Pope says

Richard Owen | March 18, 2009
Article from: The Times

THE Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the AIDS epidemic - but were instead part of the problem.

In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told reporters en route to Cameroon that AIDS “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25204278-601,00.html?from=public_rss

The same Richard Owen. It’s not the first time he got a Vatican report wrong.

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